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HISTORY 



Thirty-Ninth Congress 



OF THE 



UNITED STATES, 






By WILLIAM H. BAENES, A.M., 

AUTHOR OF " THE BODY POLITIC." 



WITH P ORTRAITS, 




NEW YORK: 

HARPER*& BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

S2T TO 335,pPEARL STREET. 

1868. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, Iw 

WILLIAM H. BARNES, 

[n the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District 

of Columbia. 



PREFACE. 



THE Mstoiy of tlie Tliirty-Nintli Cqngress is a sequel 
to tliat of tlie Rebellion. This liaving been over- 
throAvn, it remained for Congress to administer upon its 
effects. It depended upon the decisions of Congress 
whether the expected results of our victories should be 
realized or lost. 

Now that the work of the Thui;y-Mnth Congress stands 
forth complete, people naturally desire to know some- 
thing of the manner in which the rough material was 
shaped into order, and the workmanship by which the 
whole was "fitly joined together." It can not be said 
of this fabric of legislation that it went up without "the 
sound of the hammer." The rap of the gavel was often 
heard enforcing order or limiting the length of speeches. 

Discussion is the process by which legislation is 
achieved ; hence no history of legislation would be com- 
plete without presenting the progress of debate prepar- 
atory to the adoption of important measures. The ex- 
planation of what our legislators did is found in what 
they said. Debates, as presented in the following pages, 
are by necessity much abridged. ISTo attempt has been 
made to give a summary or synopsis of speeches. That 
which seemed to be the most striking or characteristic 
passage in a speech is given, in the words of the orator. 

Many things said and done in the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress, of great importance to the nation, are by neces- 
sity omitted. Tlie reader, in forming his opinion of 



ii PREFACE. 

Congressional character and albilitj, will bear in mind 
that those who si:)eak most frequently are not alwaj's 
the most useful legislators. Men from whom no quo- 
tation is made, and to whom no measure is attributed 
in the following pages, may be among the foremost in 
watchfulness for their constituents, and faithfulness to 
the country. 

If it should seem that one subject — the negro ques- 
tion — occupied too much of the time and attention of 
Congress, it must be borne in mind that this subject 
was thrust upon Congress and the country by the issue 
of the Eebellion, and must be definitely and finally 
settled before the nation can be at rest. "Unsettled 
questions have no pity on the repose of mankind." 

No attempt has been made to present a journal of 
Congressional proceedings, giving a detail of what was 
said and done from day to day in the Senate and the 
House. There was always some great national question 
under consideration in one or the other House, forming 
an uninterrupted series of discussions and transactions. 
To present these in review is to give a history of the 
Thu'ty-Ninth Congress, since they distinguish it from all 
its predecessors, and make it historical. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I.— Opening Scenes. 

(Page 13-21.) 

Momentous Evexts of the Vacation — Opening op the Senate — -Mr. 
Wade — Mr. Soiner — Mr. Wilson — Mr. ILvrris — Edward McPherson — 
As Clerk of the preceding Congress, he calls the House to order- 
Interruption OF EOLL-CALL BY Mr. MaYNARD — ^REMARKS BY Mr. BrOOKS — 

His- Colloquy with Mr. Stevens — Mr. Colfax elected Speaker — His 
Inaugural Address — The Test Oath. 



CHAPTER II. — Locations op the Members and Cast op the 

Committees. 

(Page 22-32.) 

Importance of surroundings — Members sometimes referred to by their 
SEATS — Senator Andrew Johnson — Seating of the Senators — Drawing 
IN the House — The Senate Chajiber as seen from the Gallery — Dis- 
tinguished Senators — The House of Representatites — Some prominent 
characters — Importance op Committees— Difficulty in their appoint- 
ment — Important Senate Committees — Committees of the House. 



CHAPTER III. — Formation op the Joint Committee on 
Reconstruction. 

(Page a3-49.) 

Lack of Excitement — Cause — The Re.solution — ^Dilatory Motions — Yeas 
AND Nays — Proposed Amendments in the Senate — Debate in the Sen- 
ate — Mr. Howard — Mr. Anthony — Mr. Doolittle — Mr. Fessenden — 
Mr. Saulsbury — Mr. Hendricks — Mr. Trumbull — Mr. Guthrie — Pas- 
sage OF THE Resolution in the Senate — Yeas and Nays — Remarks op 
Mr. Stevens on the Amendment of the Senate — Concurrence of the 
House — ^The Committee appointed. 
1 



iv coj^te:n'ts. 

CHAPTER IV.— Suffrage in the District op Columbia. 

(Page 50-9^.) 

DrxY OF Congress to legislate for the District op Columbia — Suffrage 
Bill introduced ixto the House— Speech by Mr. Wilson — ^Mr. Boyer — 
Mr. Schofield — Mr. Kelly — Mr. Rogers — ^Mr. Farnsworth — Mr. Davis 
— Mr. CiiANi.ER — Mr. Bixghaji — Mr. Grinnell — ^Mr. Kasson — Mr. Ju- 
lian — Mu. TiioM.vs — Mr. Darling — Mr. Hale's Asiendment — Mr. Thayer 
— Mr. A'an Hukn — ^Ik. Cl^uike — Mr. Johnson — Mr. Boutw'ell. 



CHAPTER v.— TuE Freedmen. 

(Page 95-103.) 

Necessities of the Freedmen — Committee in the House — ^Earlt Move- 
ment BY THE Senate in behalf of Freedmen — Senator Wilson's Bill — 
Occ-vsioN FOR IT — Mr. Cowan moves its reference — Mr. Reverdy John- 
son advises deliberation — A question of time with Mr. Sherjian — ^Mr. 
Trumbull promises a more efficient bill — Mr. Sumner presents proof 
OF the bad condition of affairs in the South — ^^Mr. Cowan and Mr. 
Stewart produce the President as a witness for the defense — Mr. 
Wilson on the testimony — "Conservatism" — The bill absorbed in 
greater measures. 



CHAPTER VI. — The Freedmen's Bureau Bill in the Senate. 

(Page 104-137.) 

The Bill introduced and referred to Judiciary Committee — Its provis- 
ions — Argument of Mr. Hendricks against it — Reply of Mr. Trumbull 
— Mr. Cowan's Amendment — Mr. Guthrie wishes to relieve Kentucky 
from the operation of the bill — Mr. Cresa'ell desires that Maryland 

MAY ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF THE BILL Mr. CoWAN's GrATITUDE TO Got) AND 

Friendship for the Negro — Remarks by Mr. Wilson — " The short gen- 
, tlem.vn's long speech" — Yeas AND Nays — Insulting title. 



CHAPTER VII. — The Freedmen's Bureau Bill in the House. 

(Page 138-157.) 

The Bill Reported to the House — Mr. Eliot's Speech — History — Mr. 
Dawson vs. the Negro — Mr. Garfield — The Idol broken — Mr. Taylor 
counts the Cost — ^^Ir. Donnelly's Amendment — Mr. Kerr — Mr. Mar- 
shall ON White Slavery — Mr. Hubbard — !Mr. Moulton — Opposition 
FROM Kentucky — Mr. Ritter — Mr. Rosseau's Threat — ]\Ir. Shanklin's 
Gloomy Prospect — Mr. Trimble's Appeal — Mr. McKee an exceptional 
Kentuckian — Mr. Grinnell on Kentucky — The Es^uiple of Russia — 
Mr. Phelps — ^Mr. Shell abarger's Amendment — Mr. Chanler — ^Mr, 
Stevens' A.mendments — Mr. Eliot closes the Discussion — Passage of the 
Bill — Ye.vs and Nays. •• 



comte:n'ts V 

CHAPTER VIII. — The Senate and the Veto Message. 

(Page 158-187.) 
Mr. Trumbull on the Amendsients of the House — Mr. Guthrie exhibits 

FEELING ^Ir. ShERM^Vn's DELIBERATE CONCLUSION — Mr. IIkNDERSON's SOV- 
EREIGN REMEDY — Mr. Trumbull on patent medicines — Mr. McDougall a 

WHITE MAN — Mr. ReVERDY JoHNSON on THE POWER TO PASS THE BiLL — CON- 
CURRENCE OF THE House — The Veto Message — Mr. Lane, of Kansas — His 

EFFORTS FOR DELAY — Mr. GaRRETT DaVIS — Mr. TrUMBULL's REPLY TO THE 

President — The question Tj\xen — Yeas and Nays — Failure of i' ass age. 



CHAPTER IX.— Tue Civil Rights Bill in the Senate. 

(Page 188-219.) 
Duty of Congress consequent upon the Abolition of Slavery — Civil Rights 
Bill introduced — Reference to Judiciary Committee — Before the Sen- 
ate — Speech by Mr. Trujibull — Mr. Saulsbury — Mr. Van Winkle — Mr. 
Cowan — Mr. Howard— Mr. Johnson — Mr. Davis — Conversations with 
]Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Clark — Reply of Mr. Johnson — Remarks by Mr. 
Morrill — Mr. Davis "wound up" — Mr. Guthrie's Speech — ^Mr. Hen- 
dricks — Reply of Mr. Lane — Mr. Wilson — Mr. Trumbull's closing re- 
marks — Yeas and Nays on the passage of the Bill. 



CHAPTER X. — The Civil Rights Bill in the House of 
Representatives. 

(Page 220-214.) 
The Bill- referred to the Judiciary Committee and reported back — 
Speech by the CuAiasiAN of the Committee — Mr. Rogers — Mr. Cook — 
Mr. Thayer — Mr. Eldridge — Mr. Thornton — Mr. Windoji — Mr. Shel- 
labarger — Mr. Broomall — Mr. Raymond — Mr. Delano — Mr. Kerr — 
Amendment by Mr. Bingham — His Speech — Reply by his Colleague — 
Discussion closed by Mr. Wilson — Yeas and Nays on the passage op 
the Bill — Mr. Le Blond's proposed title — Amendments of the House 

ACCEPTED by THE SeNATE. 



CHAPTER XI.— The Civil Rights Bill and the Veto. 

(Page 245-293.) 
Doubts as to the President's Decision — Suspense ended — The Veto Mes- 
sage — Mr. Trumbull's Answer— 'Mr. Reverdy Johnson defends the 
Message — Rejoinder — Remarks of Mr. Yates — Mr. Cowan appeals to 
THE Country — Mr. Stewart shows how States jiay make the Law a 
Nullity — ^Mr. Wade — ]SIr. McDougall on Persian Mythology — Mr. J. 
H. Lane defends the President — Mr. Wade — The President's Col- 
lar — ^Mr. Brown — Mr. Doolittle — Mr. Garrett Davis — Mr. Sauls- 
bury — Yeas and Nays in the Senate — Vote in the House — The Civil 
Rights Bill becomes a Law. 



vi COXTEjXTS. 

CHAPTER XII. — The Second Freedmen's Bureau Bill 
BECOMES A Law. 

(Page 29-1-30G.) 

The Discovert of the Majority — The Senate Bill — The House Bill — 
Its Provisions — Passage of the Bill — Amendment and Passage in the 
Senate — Committee of Conference — The Amendments as Accepted- 
Toe Bill as Passed — The Veto — The Proposition op a Democrat 
Accepted — Confusion in Leadership — Passage of the Bill over the 
Veto — It Becomes a Law. 



CHAPTER XIII. — First Words on Reconstruction 

(Page 307-323.) 

Responsibility of the Republican Party — Its Power and Position — ^Ini- 
tiatory Step — Mr. Stevens speaks for himself — Condition of the Rebel 
States — Constitutional Authority under which Congress should act — 
Estoppel — What Constitutes Congress — The First Duty — Basis of Rep- 
resentation — Duty on Exports — Two important Principles — Mr. Ray- 
mond's Theory — Rebel States still in the Union — Consequences of the 
Radical Theory — Conditions to be required — State Sovereignty — Rebel 
Debt — Prohibition of Slavery — Two Policies contrasted — Reply of Mr. 
Jenckes — Difference in Terms, not in Slibstance — ^Logic of the Con- 
servatives leads to the Results of the Radicals. 



CHAPTER XIV. — The Basis of Representation in the House, 

(Page 324-372.) « 

First work of the Joint Committee — The Joint Resolution proposing a 
Constitutional Amendment — Mr. Stevens' reasons for speedy action — 
Protracted Discussion commenced — Objections to the Bill by Mr. Rog- 
ers — Defense by* Mr. Conkling — Two other .Modes — How States might 
Evade the Law — Not a Finality — Wisconsin and South Carolina — 
A31ENDMENT FOR Female Suffrage proposed — Orth on Indiana and Mas- 
sachusetts — Obscuration of the Sun — More Radical Remedy desired — 
A Kentuckiax gratified — Citations from the Census^Premium for 
Treason — White Slaves — Power to ajiend well-nigh exhausted— Ob- 
jections to the Suffrage Basis — "Race" and "Color" ambiguous — Con- 
dition OF the Question — Recommitted — Final Passage. 



CHAPTER XV. — The Basis of Representation in the Senate. 

(Page 373-414.) 

The Joint Resolution goes to the Senate — Counter-proposition by Mr. 
Sumner — He Speaks Five Hours — Mr. Henderson's Amendment — Mr. 
Fessenden — Mr. Henry S. Lane — Mr. Johnson — Mr. Henderson — Mpw 



COJYTEjYTS. vii 

Clark's Historical Statements — Fred. Douglass' Memorial — Mb. Wil- 
liams — Mr. Hendricks — Mr. Chandler's "Blood-letting Letter" — 
Proposition of Mr. Yates — His Speech — Mr. Bcckalew against New 
England — Mr. Pomeroy — Mr. Sumner's second Speech — Mr. Doolittle 
— Mr. ]\roRRiLL — Mr. Fes.senden meets Objections — Final Vote — Tuv. 
Amendment defeated. 



CHAPTER XVI. — Representation op the Southern States. 

(Page 417-433.) 

Concurrent Kesolutjon — A "Venomous Fight" — Passage in the House — 
The Resolution in the Senate — "A Political Wrangle" deprecated — 
Importance of the Question — "A Straw in a Storm" — Policy of the 
President — Conversation between two Senators — Mr. Nye's Advice 
to Rebels — "A D^vngerous Power" — "Was Mr. Wade once a Seces- 
sionist?" — Garrett Davis' PROGRAiiME for the President — "Useless 
vet Mischievous" — The Great Question settled. 



CHAPTER XVIL — The Reconstruction Amendment in the 

House. 

(Page 434-451.) 

A Constitutional Amendment proposed and postponed — Proposition by 
Mr. Stewart — The Reconstruction Amendment — Death of its Prede- 
cessor LAilENTED — OPPOSITION TO THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF ReBELS "ThE 

Unrepentent Thirty-three" — Nine-tenths reduced to One-t^>'elfth — 
Advice to Congress — The Committee denounced — Democratic and Re- 
publican Policy compared — Authority without Power — A Variety of 
Opinions — An Earthquake predicted — The Joint Resolution passes 
the House. 



CHAPTER XVIII. — The Reconstruction Amendment in the 

Senate. 

(Page 432-455.) 

Difference between Discussions in the House and in the Senate — Mr. 
Sumner proposes to postpone — Mr. Howard takes Charge of the Amend- 
ment — Substitutes proposed — The Republicans in Council — The Dis- 
franchising Clause stricken out — Humorous Account by Mr. Hendricks 
— The Pain and Penalties op not holding Office — A Senator's Piety 
appealed to — Howe vs. Doolittle — Marketable Principles — Praise of 
the President — Mr. McDougaxl's Charity — Vote of the Senate — Con- 
currence in the House. 



viii COJTTEJ^^TS. 

CHAPTER XIX. — Report of the Committee on Reconstruction. 

(Page 4CG-472.) 
A.V IMPORTANT StATE PaPEK — WoRK OF THE COMMITTEE — DIFFICULTY OF 

obtaixixg informatiox theory of the president taxation and 

Representation — Disposition and doings of the Southern People — 
Conclusion of the Committee — Practical Recommendations. 



CHAPTER XX. — Restoration op Tennessee. 

(Page 473-482.) 

Assembling of the Tennessee Legislature — Ratification of the Constitu- 
tional Amendment — Restoration of Tennessee proposed in Congress — 
The Government op Tennessee not Republican — Protest against the 
Pke^vjible — Passage in the House — New Prea^ible proposed — The Presi- 
dent's Opinion deprecated and disregarded — Passage in the Senate — 
The President's Approval and Protest — Admission of Tennessee Mem 
BERs — Mr. Patterson's Case. 



CHAPTER XXr.— Negro Suffrage. 

(Page 483-501.) 

Review of the preceding action — Efforts of Mr. Yates for Unrestricted 
Suffrage — Davis's Amendment to Cuvier — The "Propitious Hour" — 
The Mayor's Remonstrance — Mr. Willey's Amendment — Mr. Cowajj's 
Amemdment for Fejiale Suffrage — Attempt to out-radical the Rad- 
icals — Opinions for and against Female Suffrage — Reading and Writ- 
ing AS A Qualification — Passage of the Bill — Objections of the Presi- 
dent — Two Senators on the Opinions of the People — The SuFFRiiGE 
Bill becomes a Law. 



CHAPTER XXII. — The Military Reconstruction Act. 

(Page 502-551.) 

Proposition by Mr. Stevens — "Piratical Governments" not to be recog- 
nized — The Military Feature introduced — Mr. Schofield's Dog — The 
Only Hope of Mr. Hise — Conversation concernln'g the Reconstruction 
Committee — Censure of a Member — A Military Bill Reported — War 
Predicted — The "Blaine Amendment" — Bill passes the House — In the 
Senate — Proposition to Amend — Mr. McDougall desires Liberty op 
Speech — Mr. Doolittle pleads for the Life of the Republic — Mr. 
Sherm.vn's Amendment — Passage in the Senate — Discussion and Xon- 

CONCCRRENCE IN THE HoUSE — ThE SeNATE UNYIELDING QUALIFIED CON- 
CURRENCE OF THE Hou.SE — The Veto — "The Funer.vl of the Nation" — 
The Act — Supplementary Legislation. 



COJfTEJVTS. ix 

CHAPTER XXIII. — Otuer Important Acts. 

(Page 552-560.) 
Equalizing Bounties — The Akmy — The Department of Education — South- 
ern Homesteads — The Bankrupt Law — The Tariff — Reduction op Taxes 
— Contracting the Currency-;-Issue of Three Per Cents. — Nebraska 
AND Colorado — Tenure of Office. 



CHAPTER XXIV. — The President and Congress. 

(Page 561-567.) 

The President's treatment of the South — First Annual Message — Mr. 
Sumner's Criticism — The President triumphant — He damages his Cause 
— Humor of Mr. Stevens — Vetoes overridden — The Question submitted 
to the People — Their Verdict — Sujimary of Vetoes — Impeachment — 
Charges by Mr. Ashley — Report of the Committee. 



CHAPTER XXV.— Personal. 

(Page 568-576.) 

Contested Seats — Mr. Stockton votes for Himself — ^New Jersey's loss 
of two Senators — Losses of Vermont — Suicide of James H. Lane — 
Death in the HoiJfeE — General Scott — ^Lincoln's Eulogy and Statue — 
Mr. Sumner on Fine Arts in the Capitol — Censure of Mr. Chanler — 
Petition for the expulsion of Garret Davis — Grinnell assaulted by 
Rousseau — The Action of the House — Leader op the House. 



Biographical Sketches 577 



LIST OF PORTRAITS. 



PAGE 

1. — Hon. ScmiYLEu Colfax, Frontispiece. 

2. — Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, 29 

3. — Hon. "William D. Kelley, 59 

4. — Hon. Sidney Clakke, . . . . . . .89 

5. — Hon. Thomas A. Hendricks, 109 

G. — Hon. Heney Wilson, 135 

7. — Hon. Samuel C. JPomeeoy, 171 

8. — Hon. Eeveedy Johnson, 203 

9.— Hon. James F. Wilson, 239 

10. — ^HoN. William M. Stewaet, 275 

11. — Hon. Ebon C. Ingeesoll, 307 

12. — Hon. Robeet C. Schenck, . 353 

13. — ^HoN. EicHAED. Yates, 399 

14. — Hon. Edwin T>. Moegan, 453 

15. — Hon. Willlui B. Stokes, 481 

IG. — Hon. Geoege H. Williams, 517 

17. — ^HoN. John Qonness, 541 

18. — Hon. James M. Ashley, 567 



INTRODUCTORY. 



By HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX, 

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OP EEPKESENTATIVES. 

THE CONGRESS that has just passed away has written a 
record that will be long remembered by the poor and friend- 
less, whom it did not forget. Misrepresented or misunderstood by 
those who denounced it as enemies, harshly and unjustly criti- 
cised by some who should have been its friends, it proved itself 
more faithful to human progress and liberty than any of its prede- 
cessors. The outraged and oppressed found in these congressional 
halls champions arid friends. Its key-note of policy was protection 
to the down-trodden. It quailed not before the mightiest, and 
neglected not the obscurest. It lifted the slave, Avhom the nation 
had freed, to the full stature of manhood. It placed on our 
statute-book the Civil Rights Bill as our nation's magna charta, 
grander than all the enactments that honor the American code; 
and in all the region whose civil governments had been destroyed 
by a vanquished rebellion, it declared as a guarantee of defense 
to the weakest that the freeman's hand should wield the free- 
man's ballot ; and that none but loyal men should govern a land 
which loyal sacrifices had saved. Taught by inspiration that new 
wine could not be safely put in old bottles it proclaimed that 
there could be no safe or loyal reconstruction on a foundation of 
unrepentant treason and disloyalty. 

The first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress proposed, as their 
plan of Reconstruction, a Constitutional Amendment. It was a 



12 IJfTB OB UCTOB T. 

bond of public justice and public safety combined, to be embodied 
in our national Constitution, to show to our . posterity that j^atriot- 
isni is a virtue and rebellion is a crime. These terms were 
more magnanimous than were ever offered in any country under 
like circumstances. They were kind, they were forbearing, they 
were less than we had a right to demand ; but in our anxiety, in 
our desire to close up this question, we made the proposition. 
How was it received ? They trampled upon it, they spat upon 
it, they repudiated it, and said they would have nothing to do 
with it. They were determined to have more power after the 
rebellion than they had before. 

When this jiroposition was repudiated, we came together again, 
at the second session of the same Congress, to devise some other 
plan of reconstruction in place of the proffer that had been spurned. 
We put the basis of our reconstruction, first, upon every loyal man 
in the South, and then we gave the ballot also to every man who 
had only been a traitor. The persons we excluded, for the present, 
from suffrage in the South, were not the thousands who struggled 
in the rebel army, not the millions who had given their adhesion 
to it, but only those men who had sworn allegiance to the Con- 
stitution and then added to treason the crime of perjury. 

Though we demand no indemnity for the past, no banishment, 
no confiscations, no penalties for the offended law, there is one 
thing we do demand, there is one thing we have the power to 
demand, and that is security for the future, and that we intend 
to have, not only in legislation, but imbedded in "the imperishable 
bulwarks of our national Constitution, against which the waves 
of secession may dash in future but in vain. We intend to have 
those States reconstructed on such enduring corner-stones that 
posterity shall reaUze that our fallen heroes have not died in 
vain. 



THE THIRTY-NmTH- CONGRESS. 



CHAPTER I. 

OPENING SCENES. 



Momentous Events op the Vacation— Opening of the Senate — Mfw 
Wade — Mk. Sumner — Mr. Wilson — Mr. Harris — Edward McPherson — 
As Clerk op the preceding Congress, he calls the House to order — 
Interruption of Boll-call by Mr. Matnard — Remarks by Mr. Brooks — 
His Colloquy with Mr. Stevens— Mr. Colfax elected Speaker— His 
Inaugural Address — The Test Oath. 

THE Thirty-ninth Congress of the United States, convened 
in the Capitol at Washington on the fourth of December, 
1865. Since the adjournment of the Thirty-eighth Con- 
gress, events of the greatest moment had transpired — events 
which invested its successor with responsibilities unparalleled 
in the history of any preceding legislative body. 

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of tlie United States, 
had been slain by the hand of the assassin. The crime had 
filled the land with horror. The loss of its illustrious victim 
had veiled the nation in unaffected grief. 

By this great national calamity, Andrew Johnson, who on 
the fourth of March preceding had taken his seat simply to 
preside over the deliberations of the Senate, became President 
of the United States. 

Meanwhile the civil war, which had been waged with such 
ter]*ible violence and bloodshed for four years preceding, came 
to a sudden termination. The rebel armies, under Generals 
Lee and Johnston, had surrendered to the victorions soldiers 

(13) 



14 THE TEIRTY-J^IKTH COJ^GRESS. 

of the United States, who in their generosity had granted to 
tlie vanquished terms so mild and easy as to excite universal 
surprise. 

Jefferson Davis, Alexander II. Stephens, and some other 
leadft's in the rebellion, had been captured and held for a time 
as State prisoners; but, at length, all save the "President of the 
Confederate States" were released on parole, and finally par- 
doned by the President. 

The President had issued a proclamation granting amnesty 
and pardon to "all who directly or indirectly particijiated in 
the rebellion, with restoration of all rights of property, except 
as to slaves," on condition of their subscribing to a prescribed 
Oj^th. By the provisions of this proclamation, fourteen classes 
of persons were excepted from the benefits of the amnesty 
offered therein, and yet " any person belonging to the excepted 
classes" was encouraged to make special application to the 
President for pardon, to whom clemency, it was declared, would 
" be liberally extended." In compliance with this invitation, 
multitudes had obtained certificates of pardon from the Presi- 
dent, some of whom were at once elected by the Southern people, 
to represent them, as Senators and Representatives, in the Thirty- 
ninth Congress. 

The President had further carried on the work of reconstruc- 
tion by appointing Provisional Governors for many of the States 
lately in rebellion. He had recognized and entered into com- 
munication with the Legislatures of these States, prescribing 
certain terms on which they might secure representation in 
Congress, and recognition of " all their rights under the Consti- 
tution." 

By these and many other events which had transpired siilce the 
expiration of the preceding Congress, the legislation pertaining 
to reconstruction had become a work of vast complexity, involv- 
ing principles more profound, and questions more difficult, than 
ever before presented for the consideration and solution of men 
assembled in a legislative capacity. 

At twelve o'clock on the day designated in the Constitution 
for the meeting of Congress, the Senate assembled, and was called 
to order by Hon. Lafayette S. Foster, President jjro tempore. 
Senators from twenty-five States were in their seats, and answered 
to their names. Pev. E. H. Gray, Chaplain of the Senate, in- 



OPEm:^G SCEJfES. 15 

vokcd the blessing of Almighty God upon Congress, and prayed 
" that all their deliberations and enactments might be such as to 
secure the Divine approval, and insure the unanimous acquies- 
cence of the people, and command the respect of the nations of 
the earth." 

Soon after the preliminary formalities of opening the Senate 
had transpired, Benjamin F. Wa'de, Senator from Ohio, inaugu- 
rated the labors of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and significantly 
foreshadowed one of its most memorable acts by introducing " a 
bill to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia ." 

The Senate signified its willingness to enter at once upon active 
duty by giving unanimous consent to Mr. Sumner, Senator from 
Massachusetts, to introduce a number of important bills. The 
measures thus brought before the Senate were clearly indicative 
of the line of policy which Congress would pursue. The bills 
introduced were designed " to carry out the principles of a re- 
publican form of government in the District of Columbia ;" " to 
present an oath to maintain a republican form of government in 
the rebel States ;" " to enforce the amendment to the Constitution 
abolishing slavery;" "to enforce the guarantee of a republican 
form of government in certain States where governments have 
been usurped or overthrown." 

Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, was not behind his distin- 
guished colleague in his readiness to enter upon the most laborious 
legislation of the session. He introduced "a bill to maintain the 
freedom of the inhabitants in the States declared in insurrection 
by the proclamation of the President on the first of July, 1862." 

Senator Harris, of New York, long known as one of the ablest 
jurists of his State, and recently an eminent member of the Sen- 
ate's Judiciary Committee, directed attention to his favorite field 
of legislative labor by introducing "a bill to reorganize the 
Judiciary of the United States." 

While the Senate was thus actively entering upon the labors 
of the session, a somewhat different scene was transpiring in the 
other end of the Capitol. 

Long before the hour for the assembling of Congress, the halls, 
the galleries, and corridors of the House of Kepresentatives were 
thronged with such crowds as had never before been seen at the 
opening of a session. The absorbing interest felt throughout the 
entire country in the great questions to be decided by Congress 



16 THE THIETY-TflKTR CONGRESS. 

had dl'a^Yn great numbers to the Capitol from every quarter of 
the Union. Eligible positions, usually held in reserve for certain 
privileged or official persons, and rarely occupied by a spectator, 
were now filled to their utmost capacity. The Diplomatic Gal- 
lery was occupied by many unskilled in the mysteries of diplo- 
macy ; the Reporters' Gallery held many listeners and lookers 
on who had no connection with newspapers, save as readers. 
The "floor" was held not only by the "members," who made 
the hall vocal with their greetings and congratulations, but by a 
great crowd of pages, office-seekers, office-holders, and unambitious 
citizens, w^ho thronged over the new carpet and among the desks. 

The hour having arrived for the assembling of Congress, 
Edward McPherson, Clerk of the last House of Representatives, 
brought down the gavel on the Speaker's desk, and called the 
House to order. The members found their seats, and the crowd 
surged back up the aisles, and stood in a compact mass in the 
rear of the last row of desks. 

Edward McPherson, who at that moment occupied the most 
prominent and responsible place in the nation, had come to his 
position through a series of steps, which afforded the country an 
oj^portunity of knowing his material and capacity. A graduate 
of Pennsylvania College in 1848, editor, author, twice a Con- 
gressman, and Clerk of the Plouse of Representatives in the 
Thirty-eighth Congress, he had given evidence that he was 
reliable. Having shown himself a thoroughly conscientious man 
in the performance of all his public duties, the great interests 
of the nation were safe in his hands. 

The country had been greatly concerned to know how the 
Clerk would make up the Roll of the House, and whether the 
names of members elect from the late rebellious States would be 
called at the opening of the session. If this should be done, 
the first step would be gained by the Representatives of those 
States toward holding seats in Congress to which the majority 
at the North considered them not entitled. It had even been 
intimated that the color of constitutionality which they would 
gain from recognition by the Clerk would be used to justify an 
assertion of their claims by force. What the Clerk would do, as 
master of the rolls and presiding officer of the House, was not 
long in doubt. 

Tlie Clerk proceeded to call the roll of Representatives elect. 



OPEJflJfG SCJ^Js'-ES. 17 

while tlic subordinates at the desk took note of the responses. 
He called the names of Congressmen from the States of Maine, 
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and so forth, in a 
certain order which had been customary time immemorial in 
naming the States. In this order Tennessee had j)lace after 
Kentucky and before Indiana. When the name of the last 
Representative from Kentucky had been called, the decisive 
moment arrived. The delegation from Tennessee were on the 
floor, ready to answer to their names. The Clerk passed over 
Tennessee and went direct to Indiana. As soon as the first 
member from Indiana had responded, there arose a tall, black- 
haired, dark-faced figure, that every body recognized as Horace 
Maynard, of Tennessee. He shook his certificate of election at 
the Clerk, and began to speak, but the gavel came down wjth a 
sharp rap, and a firm, decided voice was heard from the desk, 
"The Clerk declines to have any interruption during the call 
of the roll." The roll-call then proceeded without further inter- 
ference to the end. When, at last, the Clerk had finished his 
list of Representatives and Territorial Delegates, Mr. Maynard 
once more arose. "The Clerk can not be interrupted while 
ascertaining whether a quorum is present," says the j^residing 
officer. The count of the assistants having been completed, the 
Clerk announced, " One hundred and seventy-six members hav- 
ing answered to their names, a quorum is present." Mr. Morrill 
immediately moved that the House proceed to the election of 
Speaker. "Before that motion is put," said Mr. Maynard, 
again arising. The Clerk was ready for the emergency, and 
before Mr. Maynard could complete his sentence, he uttered the 
imperative and conclusive words, " The Clerk can not recognize 
as entitled to the floor any gentleman whose name is not on this 
roll." A buzz of approbation greeted the discreet ruling of the 
Clerk. The difficult point was passed, and the whole subject of 
the admission of Southern Representatives was handed over 
intact, to be deliberately considered after the House should be 
fully organized for business. 

Mr. Morrill, in moving to proceed to the election of a Speaker, 
had forgotten or neglected to demand the previous question, and 
thus cut off debate. Mr. James Brooks, most plausible in address, 
and most ready in talk on the side of the minority, saw the point 
left unguarded by his opponents, and resolved to enter. Born in 
2 



IS THE THIBTY-JflMTH COJTGEESS. 

Maine, now a citizen of New York, and editor of the " Express," 
Mr. Brooks was in Congress for the fourth time a champion of 
what he deemed the rights of the South, and not in accordance 
with the prevailing sentiments in his native and adopted States. 

:Mr. Brooks obtained the floor, and desired to amend the 
motion.- He thought the roll should be completed before pro- 
ceeding to the election of Speaker. " I trust," said he, " that we 
shall not proceed to any revolutionary, any step like that, without 
at least hearing from the honorable gentleman from Tennessee. 
If Tennessee is not in the Union, by what right does the Presi- 
dent of the United States usurp his place in the White House 
when an alien and a foreigner, and not from a State in the 
Union?" 

At this stage, a man of mark — five times a Representative in 
Congress, but now twelve years away from the capital and a new 
member — John Wentworth, of Chicago — elevated his tall and 
massive form, and with a stentorian voice called Mr. Brooks to 
order. The Clerk having fairly decided that gentleman entitled 
to the floor on the question of proceeding to the election of a 
Speaker, Mr. AVentworth sat down, and Mr. Brooks in resuming 
his remarks improved his chance to administer rebuke in a man- 
ner which provoked some mirth. "When the honorable gentle- 
man from Illinois is better acquainted with me in this House," 
said ISIr. Brooks, " he will learn that I always proceed in order, 
and never deviate from the rules." Mr. Brooks then returned to 
his championship of Mr. Maynard : " If he is not a loyal man, 
and is not from a State in this Union, what man, then, is loyal ? 
In the darkest and most doubtful period of the war, when an ex- 
ile from his own State, I heard his eloquent voice on the banks 
of the St. Lawrence arousing the people of my own State to dis- 
charge their duties to the country." 

Mr. Brooks joined Virginia with Tennessee, and asked the 
Clerk to give his reasons for excluding the names of Representa- 
tives from these States from the roll. The Clerk replied that he 
had acted in accordance with his views of duty, and was willing to 
let the record stand ; if it was the desire of the House to have his 
reasons, he would give them. 

" It is not necessary," said Thaddeus Stevens ; " we know all." 

"I know," replied Mr. Brooks, "that it-is known to all in one 
quarter, but that it is not known to many in other quarters in 



OPEjYIJ^G SCEjYES. 19 

this House, why this cxchision has been made. I should know 
but little, if I had not the record before me of the resolution 
adopted by the Eepublican majority of this House, that Tennes- 
see, Louisiana, and Virginia were to be excluded, and excluded 
without debate. Why without debate? Are gentlemen afraid to 
face debate ? Are their reasons of such a character that they dare 
not present them to the country, and have to resort to the extra- 
ordinary step of sideway legislation, in a private caucus, to enact 
a joint resolution to be forced upon this House without debate, 
confirming that there are no reasons whatever to support this 
position except their absolute power, and authority, and control 
over this House? If the gentleman from Pennsylvania would 
but inform me at what period he intends to press this resolution, 
I would be hajipy to be informed." 

" I propose to present it at the proper time," was the response 
of Mr. Stevens, provoking laughter and applause. 

Mr. Brooks replied: "Talleyrand said that language was given 
to man to conceal ideas, and we all know the gentleman's ingenu- 
ity in the use of language. The proper time! When will that 
be ?" Mr. Brooks then proceeded at some length to answer this 
question. He supposed the proper time would be as soon as the 
House was organized, and -before the President's message could 
be heard and considered, that the action of the House might 
silence the Executive, and nullify the exposition which he might 
make, and become a quasi condemnation of the action of the 
President of the United States. 

Mr. Brooks was at length ready to close, and sought to yield 
the floor to a Democratic member. The Republicans, however, 
were ready to meet the emergency, and objected to the floor being 
yielded in such a way as would cause delay withouffurtherin^ 
the business of organizing the House. Points of order were 
raised, and efforts made to entangle the Clerk, but in vain. His 
rulings were prompt, decisive, and effectual. The moment a Re- 
publican fairly held the floor, the previous question was moved, 
the initial contest was over, and the House proceeded to elect a 
Speaker. 

A stoop-shouldered, studious-looking gentleman, now for the 
sixth successive term a member of Congress — Justin S. Morrill, 
of Vermont — arose and nominated Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana 
On the other side of the house, a gentleman from New York 



20 THE th:ieti\yixth cojvgbess. 

portly in his person, now entering on his second Congressional 
term — Charles H. Winficld — nominated James Brooks, of New 
York. Four members took their seats behind the Clerk to act 
as tellers. The responses were at length all given, and the num- 
bers noted. Mr. Morrill, one of the tellers, announced the re- 
sult — "Mr. Colfax, one hundred and thirty-nine; Mr. Brooks, 
thirty-six." The Clerk formally announced the result, and 
stepped aside ; his work as presiding officer of the Thirty-ninth 
Congress was at an end. 

In the place thus made vacant appeared the man but a moment 
before elected to the position by the largest political majority 
ever given to a Speaker of the House. A well-proportioned 
figure of medium size, a pleasing countenance often radiant with 
smiles, a style of movement quick and restless, yet calm and self- 
possessed, were characteristic of him upon whom all eyes were 
turned. In the past a printer and editor in Indiana, now in 
Congress for the sixth term, and elected Speaker the second time, 
Schuyler Colfax stood to take the oath of office, and enter 
upon the discharge of most difficult and responsible duties. He 
said : 

" Gentlemen of the House of Representatives : The reassem- 
bling of Congress, marking as it does the procession of our na- 
tional history, is always regarded with interest by the people for 
whom it is to legislate. But it is not unsafe to say that millions 
more than ever before. North, South, East, and AVest, are looking 
to the Congress which opens its session to-day with an earnest- 
ness and solicitude unequaled on similar occasions in the past. 
The Thirty-eighth Congress closed its constitutional existence 
with the storm-cloud of war still lowering over us, and after nine 
Anonths' aFsence, Congress resumes its legislative authority in these 
council halls, rejoicing that from shore to shore in our land there 
is peace. 

" Its duties are as obvious as the sun's pathway in the heavens. 
Representing in its two branches the States and the peojile, its 
first and highest obligation is to guarantee to every State a repub- 
lican form of government. The rebellion having overthrown 
constitutional State governments in many States, it is yours to 
mature and enact legislation which, with the concurrence of the 
Executive, shall establish them anew on such a basis of enduring 
justice as will guarantee all necessary safeguards to the j)eople, 



OFEKm'Q SCEJ^ES. 21' 

and afford what our INIagua Charta, the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, proclaims is the chief object of government — protection to 
all men in their inalienable rights. The world should witness, in 
this great work, the most inflexible fidelity, the most earnest de- 
votion to the principles of liberty and humanity, the truest patri- 
otism and the wisest statesmanship. 

" Heroic men, by hundreds of thousands, have died that the 
Republic might live. The emblems of mourning have darkened 
White House and cabin alike ; but the fires of civil war have 
melted every fetter in the land, and proved the funeral pyre of 
slavery. It is for you. Representatives, to do your work as faith- 
fully and as well as did the fearless saviors of the Union in their 
more dangerous arena of duty. Then we may hope to see the 
vacant and once abandoned seats around us gradually filling up, 
until this hall shall contain Representatives from every State and 
district ; their hearts devoted to the Union for which they are to 
legislate, jealous of its honor, proud of its glory, watchful of its 
rights, and hostile to its enemies. And the stars on our banner, 
that paled when the States they represented arrayed themselves 
in arms against the nation, will shine with a more brilliant light 
of loyalty than ever before." 

Mr. Oolfax having finished his address, took the following 
oath, which stood as the most serious obstacle in the way of many 
elected to Congress from the Southern States : 

" I do solemnly swear that I have never voluntarily borne arms against 
the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have volunta- 
rily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged 
in armed hostility thereto ; that I have neither sought nor accepted nor at- 
tempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority 
or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not 
yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, 
or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto. And I 
do further swear that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support 
and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign 
and domestic ; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same ; that I 
take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of 
evasion ; and that I Avill well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office 
on which I am about to enter. So help me God ! " 

The subordinate officers were then elected by resolution, and 
the House of Representatives being organized, was ready to enter 
upon its work. 



THE THIBTr-jriA'Tff COJfGBESS. 



CHAPTER n. 

LOCATIONS OF THE MEMBERS AND CAST OF THE COMMITTEES. 

Importance of surroundings — Members sometimes referred to by their 
SEATS — Senator Andrew Johnson — Seating of the Senators — Drawing 
IN THE House — The Senate-chajiber as seen from the Gallery — Dis- 
tinguished Senators — The House op Eepresentatives — Some prominent 
characters — Importance of Committees — Difficulty in their appoint- 
ment — Important Senate Committees — Committees of the House. 

THE localities and surroundings of men have an influence on 
their actions and opinions. A matter which, to the casual 
observer, seems so unimportant as the selection and arrange- 
ment of the seats of Senators and Representatives, has its influence 
upon the legislation of the country. Ever since parties have had 
an existence, it has been considered of vital moment that those 
of one j)olitical faith in a deliberative body should occuj)y, as 
nearly as possible, the same locality. 

It is sometimes of service to a reader, in attempting to under- 
stand the reported proceedings of Congress, to know the localities 
of the members. Each scat has a sort of history of its own, and 
becomes in some way identified with its occupant. Members are 
frequently alluded to in connection with the seats they occupy. 
Sometimes it happens that, years after a man has gone from 
Congress, it is convenient and suggestive to refer to him by his 
old place in the chamber. As an illustration, Mr. Trumbull, 
in his speech on the veto of the Civil Rights Bill, desiring to 
quote Andrew Johnson, Senator, against Andrew Johnson, Presi- 
dent, referred to "a speech delivered in this body by a Senator 
occupying, I think, the seat now occupied across the chamber by 
my friend from Oregon (Mr. Williams)." 

A necessary and important part of the adjustment of the 



LOCATIOJ^S OF THE MEMBERS. 23 

machinery, at the opening of each Congress, is the selection of 
seats. As the Senators serve for six years, and many of them 
have been reelected more than once, there are comparatively few 
changes made at the opening of any Congress. The old members 
generally clioose to retain their accustomed seats, and the small 
number that come in as new Senators choose among the vacant 
seats, as convenience or caprice may dictate. 

In the House of Representatives the formality of drawing for 
seats is necessary. That this may be conveniently and fairly 
done, at the appointed time all the members retire to the ante- 
chambers, leaving the seats all unoccupied. The Clerk draws 
at random from a receptacle containing the names of all the 
members. As the members are called, one by one, they go 
in and occupy such seats as they may choose. The unlucky 
member whose name last turns up has little room for choice, 
and must be content to spend his Congressional days far from 
the Speaker, on the remote circumference, or to" the right or 
left extreme. 

There are in the Senate-chamber seventy seats, in three tiers 
of semi-circular arrangement. If all the old Southern States 
were represented by Senators on the floor, the seats would be 
more than full. As it was in the Thirty-ninth Congress, there 
were a number of vacant desks, all of them situated to the right 
and left of the presiding officer. 

In a division of political parties nearly equal, the main aisle 
from the southern entrance would be the separating line. As it 
was, the Republican Senators occupied not only the eastern half 
of the chamber, but many of them were seated on the other side, 
the comparatively few Democratic Senators sitting still further to 
the west. 

Seated in the gallery, the spectator has a favorable position to 
survey the grand historic scene which passes below. His eye is 
naturally first attracted to the chair which is constitutionally the 
seat of the second dignitary in the land — the Vice-President of 
the United States. That office, however, has no incumbent, since 
he who took oath a few months before to perform its 'duties was 
called to occupy a higher place, made vacant by a most atrocious 
crime. The event, however, cost the Senate little loss of dignity, 
since the chair is filled by a President 'pro tempore of great ability 
and excellence — Lafayette S. Foster, Senator from Connecticut. 



2^ THE THIRTY-XIMTH CONGRESS. 

The eye of the spectator naturally seeks out Charles Sumner, 
who sits away on the outer tier of seats, toward the south-east 
corner of the chamber ; and near him, on the left, are seen the 
late Governors, now Senators, ISIorgan and Yates, of New York 
and Illinois. Immediately in front of them, on the middle tier 
of seats, is an assemblage of old and distinguished Senators — 
Trumbull, Wilson, Wade, and Fessenden. To the right of the 
Vice-President's chair, and in the row of seats neares this desk, 
sits the venerable and learned lawyer, Reverdy Johnson, of Mary- 
land. Just in his rear sits the youthful Sprague, of Rhode Island, 
to whose right is seen Sherman, of Ohio. To the rear of these 
Senators, in the outer segment of seats, sits, or perhaps stands, 
Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, the most garrulous of old men, con- 
tinually out of temper Avith the majority, yet all the time marked 
by what he calls his "usual courtesy." To the left of Davis, 
beyond Nesmith, of Oregon, and the other and more silent Sen- 
ator from Kentucky, sits Saulsbury, of Delaware, unless he 
should be traversing the carpeted space in the rear of his seat, 
like a sentinel of the Senate. 

Far different is the sight presented to the spectator who looks 
down from the galleries of the House of Representatives. The 
immense area below is supplied with two hundred and fifty -three 
seats, with desks arranged in semi-circular rows, having a point 
in front of the Speaker's desk as a focus. On the right of the 
spectator, as he looks from the gallery in front of the Speaker, 
is the Republican side of the House. But this prosperous organ- 
ization has grown so rapidly since its birth, ten years ago, that 
it has overstepped all old and traditional party limitations. One- 
half of the House is not sufficient to afford its representatives 
adequate accommodations. Republican members have passed 
over the main aisle, and occupy half of the Democratic side, 
having pressed the thin ranl^s of their opponents to the extreme 
left. 

As the spectator scans the House, his eye will rest on Thad- 
deus Stevens, whose brown wig and Roman cast of countenance 
mark the Veteran of the House. He sits in the right place for 
a leader of the Republicans, about half-way back from the Speak- 
er's desk, on the diagonal line which divides the western side of 
the House, where he can readily catch the Speaker's eye, and be 
easily heard by all his friends. Immediately in his rear is his 



LOCATIOjYS of the members. 25 

successor in the chairmanship of the Committee of Ways and 
Means — INIr. ^Morrill, of A^ermont. To the right, across the aisle, 
is Elihu B. Washburn, of Illinois, the oldest member in contin- 
uous service in the House; and to his rear is Henry J. Ray- 
mond, of the Times. To the right, and partly in the rear of Mr. 
Stevens, are a number of noteworthy men: among them are 
General Schcnck, General Garfield, and "Long John" Went- 
worth, of Chicago. Far around to the right, and much nearer 
the Speaker's desk, is seen a man distinguished in civil and mili- 
tary history, who once occupied the Speaker's chair — General 
Banks, of Massachusetts. In physical contrast with him, sits — 
in the adjoining desk, a tall, dark, bearded Californian — General 
John Bidwell, a new member of the House. On the opposite 
side of the House, among the Democrats, is the seat of John A. 
Bingham, who now returns to Congress after an absence of one 
term, whom his friends describe as the " best-natured and crossest- 
looking man in the House." James Brooks, most plausible and 
best-natured of Democrats, notwithstanding the inroads of the 
Eepublicans, sturdily keeps his seat near the main aisle. His 
seat, however, he is destined to lose before many months in favor 
of a contestant, who will occupy the other side of the chamber. 

In looking down upon so large an assemblage, a large part of 
which is so distant, the eye of the spectator will weary in the at- 
tempt to discover and recognize individuals, however familiar, 
amidst the busy throng. 

In preparing for the work of legislation, a matter of more im- 
portance than the arrangement of the seats is the cast of the 
committees. Most of the labor of legislative bodies is done by 
committees. As it is impossible for any one Congressman to 
give that minute and particular attention to all the numerous 
interests demanding legislation, essential to a wise determination 
as to what bills should be presented, and how they should be 
drawn in every case, the various subjects are parceled out among 
those w^iose opportunities, interests, or inclinations have led them 
to give particular attention to the matters committed to their 
charge. The perfection of legislation on particular subjects de- 
pends not more on the wisdom of the entire body of legislala- 
tors than on the good sense of the committees that deliberate upon 
them. Much of the efficiency and success of the legislative acts 
of Congress will depend upon the structure of the committees 



26 THE THIETY-KIKTH COMGBESS. 

that do the laborious work of preparing business for the body. 
Tracing the stream of legislative enactment still nearer to its 
source, it will be found that the work of a committee takes a de- 
cided tinge from the character of its chairman. 

It consequently becomes a matter of great interest to the coun- 
try, at the ojsening of each Congress, to know who constitute the 
committees. One of the most arduous and responsible duties of 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives is the selection of 
committees and filling their chairmanships. Fitness and special 
adaptation are supposed to constitute the rule by which choice is 
made. Many elements, however, enter into the work which are 
not a part of this philosophy. It is impossible that the presiding 
officer should know unerringly who is absolutely the fittest man 
for any position, and if he possessed such su^ierhuman knowledge 
he would still be trammeled by long-established rules of precedence 
and promotion. There is often a regular gradation by which men 
arrive at positions which is not in direct ratio to their fitness for 
their places. 

Notwithstanding all the errors which were unavoidable elements 
in the work, committees were never better constituted than those 
of the Thirty-ninth 'Congress. 

The Senate being comparatively small in numbers, and, more- 
over, by usage, doing most of the details of this business in cau- 
. cus, the announcement of the committees in this body was made 
on Wednesday, the third day of the session. On the other hand, 
the size of the House, the large proportion of new and unknown 
members appearing every term, the number and magnitude of the 
committees, and the fact that the duty of appointment devolved 
upon the Speaker, combined to render the reading out of commit- 
teemen in the latter body impossible before the following Monday, 
one week after the assembling of Congress. 

Of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Charles Sum- 
ner was appointed chairman. This is a very imjiortant committee, 
being the direct channel of communication between the State De- 
partment and the Senate.* It being the constitutional duty of the 
Senate to pass upon all treaties, and to decide upon qualifica- 
tions of all persons nominated by the Executive to represent the 
United States in foreign countries, the labors of this committee 
are arduous and responsible. The chairmanship of this committee 
was filled by a Senator of most eminent fitness and ability. His 



THE CAST OF THE COMMITTEES. 27 

literaiy culture, and attainments as a scholar, his general legal 
ability and familiarity with the laAVS of nations, his residence 
abroad for several years, and his long membership in the Senate, 
now of fourteen years' duration, all marked him as wisely chosen 
for his important position. 

On account of the immense National debt accumulated in the 
war, and the complication of the financial aifairs of the nation, 
the Committee on Finance has an important bearing upon the 
interests of the country, unknown until recent years. William 
P. Fessenden was the Senator chosen chairman of this committee. 
His success in his private business, his appointment, in- 1864, as 
the head of the Treasury Department, and his service in the 
Senate since 1853 as member of the Finance Committee, and since 
1859 as its chairman, all indicated the propriety of his continu- 
ance in this position. Second on the list of this committee stood 
Senator Sherman, of Ohio, who has been described as " cm fait 
on National Banks, fond of figures, and in love with finances." 

The Committee on Commerce was constituted with Senator 
Chandler, of Michigan, as its chairman. Himself most success- 
ful in commercial life, in which he had attained distinction before 
coming to the Senate, and representing a State having a greater 
extent of coast and better facilities for commerce than any other 
inland community in the world. Senator Chandler was eminently 
suitable as head of the Committee on Commerce. His associates 
being selected from Maine, New York, Vermont, Wisconsin, 
Kansas, and Oregon, left unrepresented no important commercial 
interest in the nation. 

The Committee on Manufactures was headed by William 
Sprague, Senator from Rhode Island, a State having the largest 
capital invested, and most persons employed in manufactures, in 
proportion to population, of any in the Union. Senator Sprague 
himself having been educated in the counting-room of a manu- 
facturing establishment, and having control of one of the largest 
manufacturing interests in the country, was the appropriate per- 
son for such a position. 

The agricultural States of Ohio, Kansas, Maryland, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Kentucky furnished the members of the Committee 
on Agriculture, with Senator Sherman at its head. 

Of the Committee on the Judiciary, a Senator has given a 
description. In a speech delivered in the Senate, December 12, 



S8 THE THIRTY-JflJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

1865, Mr. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, said: "From its veiy organi- 
zation the Senate designs to make that committee its constitu- 
tional adviser — not that its ojjinions are to be conclusive or con- 
troling on the vote of any member of this body, like the opinion 
of the bench of Judges in the House of Lords ; but its members 
are chosen in consideration of their high professional ability, their 
long experience, and well-known standing as jurists, in order that 
their report upon constitutional questions may be entitled to the 
highest consideration. And, sir, if you look into the organiza- 
tion of the Judiciary Committee appointed by the Senate at the 
present session, what is it? There is the Senator from Illinois, 
[Mr. Trumbull], for years Judge of the Supreme Court of that 
State before he entered this body, who, for ten years and more, 
has been a faithful, laborious, distinguished member of that com- 
mittee, and for the last four years its chairman. And there sits 
my honorable friend from New York [Mr. Harris], for twenty 
years before he came here known and distinguished among the 
able jurists and judges of that great State. And there is the 
honorable Senator from Vermont [Mr. Poland]. He "has, it is 
true, just entered this body, but his reputation as a jurist pre- 
ceded his coming, and he comes here to fill the place in this 
chamber, and is put upon this Judiciary Committee to fill the 
place of him of whom I will say, Avithout disparagement to any, 
that he was the ablest jurist of us all — the late distinguished 
Senator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer]. And there is the Sena- 
tor from New Hampshire [Mr. Clark], from the far East, and 
the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart], from the i^icific coast, 
and the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks], from the central 
region, each of Avhom stands eminent in the profession in the State 
which he represents, and all of whom are recognized here among 
the ablest jurists of this body." 

Some of the great political questions tlestined to engage the 
attention of the Thirty-ninth Congress invested the Committee on 
the District of Columbia with a national interest, although its 
duties pertained chiefly to the local concerns of the immediate 
neighborhood of the capital. Its chairman, Mr. INIorrill, of 
Maine, as well as its members, among whom were Wade, Sum- 
ner, and Yates, gave it character and ability, and afforded assur- 
ance that the great questions involved Avould be calmly met and 
honestly answered. 




TMADDKUS STEVENS, 

^"EPBESENTATIVE FROM PENWSYLA' 



THE CAST OF THE COMMITTEES. 29 

In the House of Representatives, the Committee of Ways and 
Means has ever been regarded of first iniportanqc, and its chair- 
man has been considered leader of the House. Its duties, though 
of a somewhat miscellaneous character, relate chiefly to devising 
the Avays and means of raising revenue. The i'act that the Con- 
stitution provides that "all bills for raising revenue shall origi- 
nate in the House of Hcpresentatives," gives the Committee of 
"Ways and Means a sort of preeminence over all other commit- 
tees, whether of the Senate or the House. 

The work of the Committee of Ways and Means, as it had 
existed before the Thirty-ninth Congress, was, at the opening of 
this session, divided among three committees; one retaining the 
old name and still remaining the leading committee, a second on 
Appropriations, and a third on Banking and Currency. 

Of the new Committee of Ways and Means, Justin S. MorriM, 
of Vermont, was appointed chairman — a Representative of ten 
years' experience in the House, who had seen several years of 
service on the same committee. While his abilities and habits, 
as a student and a thinker, well adapted him for the work of 
conducting his committee by wise deliberation to useful measures, 
yet they were not characteristics fitting him with readiest tact 
and most resolute will to "handle the House." 

Thaddeus Stevens, the old chairman of the Committee of Ways 
and Means, was appointed the head of the new Committee on 
Appropriations. His vigilance and integrity admirably fitted 
him for this position, while his age made it desirable that he 
should be relieved of the arduous labors of the Committee of 
Ways and Means. Of this committee he had been chairman in 
the two preceding Congresses, and had filled a large space in 
the public eye as leader of the House. His age — over seventy 
years — gave him the respect of members the majority of whom 
were born after he graduated at college — the more especially as 
these advanced years were not attended with any perceptible 
abatement of the intellectual vivacity or fire of youth. The 
evident honesty and jiatriotism with which he advanced over . 
prostrate theories and policies toward the great ends at which he 
aimed, secured him multitudes of friends, while these same quali- 
ties contributed to make him many enemies. The timid became 
bold and the resolute were made stronger in seeing the bravery 
with which he maintained his principles. He had a habit of 



30 THE THIRTY-J^IJfTH CO^N'GRESS. 

going straight to the issue, and a rugged manner of presenting 
his opinions, CQupled with a cool assurance, which, one of his 
unfriendly critics once declared, "• sometimes rose almost to the 
sublime." He alone, of all the members of the Pennsylvania 
Convention, in 1836, refused to sign the new State Constitution, 
because it robbed the negro of his vote. It was a fitting reward 
that he, in 18G6, should stand in the United States House of 
Rei^resentatives, at the head of a majority of more than one hun- 
dred, declaring that the oppressed race should enjoy rights so 
long denied. 

The Committee on Banking and Currency had as chairman 
Theodore M. Pomeroy, of New York, who had served four years 
in Congress. Perhaps its most important member was Samuel 
Hooper, a Boston merchant and financier, who, from the outset of 
his Congressional career, now entering upon the third term, had 
been on the Committee of Ways and Means, of which he still re- 
mained a member, the only E.ej)resentative retaining connection 
with the old committee and holding a place in one" of the new 
offshoots from it. 

Hiram Price, of Iowa, was appointed chairman of the Com- 
mittee on the Pacific Eailroad. The Speaker of the House, in 
his recent visit to the Pacific coast, had been impressed with the 
importance of this work, and wisely chose as members of this 
committee Representatives from Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Massa- 
chusetts, New York, Missouri, Kansas, California, and Oregon. 

A committee of much importance to Congress and the coun- 
try — that of Commerce — had for its chairman Elihu B. Wash- 
burn, of Illinois, who had been in the previous Congress the 
oldest member in continuous service, and hence was styled 
" Father of the House." 

The Committee on Elections subsequently lost some of its im- 
portance in the public estimation by the creation of a special 
committee to consider subjects of reconstruction and the admis- 
sion of Southern members ; yet the interests confided to it de- 
manded ability, which it had in its chairman, Henry L. Dawes, 
of Massachusetts, as well as in the Representatives that consti- 
tuted its membership. 

The legislation relative to our vast unoccupied domain, having 
to pass through the Committee on Public Lands, renders this 
committee one of much importance. The honesty and ability of 



THE CAST OF THE COMMITTEES. 31 

its chairman, George W. Julian, of Indiana, together with liis 
long experience in Congress, gave to the recommendations of this 
committee great character and weight. 

Of the Committee on the Judiciary, James F. Wilson, of Iowa, 
was appointed for the second time as chairman. George S. Bout- 
well, of Massachusetts, and other Representatives of ability, 
were appointed as members of this committee. Since the duty 
devolved upon it of taking testimony in regard to the impeach- 
ment of the President, this committee attracted public attention 
to a degree never known before. 

The interests of manufactures were not likely to suffer in the 
hands of a committee in which the first place was held by James 
K. INIoorhead, tanner's apprentice, and pioneer of cotton manufac- 
tures in Pennsylvania, and the second by Oakes Ames, a leading 
manufacturer of Massachusetts. 

Agriculture — the most gigantic material interest in America — 
was intrusted to a committee having John Bidwell, of Califor- 
nia, as its chairman, and members chosen from Iowa, Indiana, 
Vermont, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New 
York. 

The chairmanship of the Committee on Military Affairs was 
bestowed upon a major-general of volunteers from Ohio, Robert 

C. Schenck ; while membership on the committee was given to a 
Connecticut colonel, Henry C. Deming ; a New Hampshire briga- 
dier-general, Gilman Marston; a Kentucky major-general, Lov- 
ell H. Rousseau ; st New York Colonel, John H. Ketchum, and 
four civilians. 

Nathaniel P. Banks, Henry J. Raymond, and other men of 
much ability, were appointed on the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs. 

Special committees were appointed on the important subjects 
of Bankruptcy and the Freedmen. Of the committee on the 
former, Thomas A. Jenckes was appointed chairman. Thomas 

D. Eliot, of Massachusetts, was made chairman of the Commit- 
tee on the Freedmen. 

Many other committees were appointed whose labors were ar- 
duous and necessary to our legislation, yet, as they had to do 
with subjects of no great general interest, they need not be 
named. 

There was another committee, however, of great importance 



3^ THE THIRTY-MIJfTH CONGRESS. 

whose members were not yet designated. The resolution by 
which it should be created, was yet .to pass through the ordeal of 
discussion. The process by which this committee was created 
will be described in the following chapter. 



OJ^ RECOIN'STRUCTIOJS' 33 



CHAPTER III. 

PORMATIOJS OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

Lack of Excitement — Caxise — The Eesolution — Dilatory Motions — Yeas 
AND Nays — Proposed Amendments in the Senate — Debate in the Sen- 
ate — Mr. Howard — Mr. Anthony — Mr. Doolittle — Mr. Fessenden — 
Mr. Saulsbury — Mr. Hendricks — Mr. Trumbull — Mr. Guthrie^Pas- 
sage of the Eesolution in the Senate — Yeas and Nays — Remarks of 
Mr. Stevens on the Amendments of the Senate — Concurrence of the 
House — The Committee appointed. 

SINCE it was known throughout the country that members- 
elect from Tennessee and other States recently in rebellion 
would appear at Washington on the opening of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress, and demand recognition of their right to repre- 
sent their constituents, all eyes were turned to observe the action 
which would be taken on the subject. It was anticipated that 
the question would be sprung at once, and that a season of storm 
and excitement would ensue, unparalleled in the political history 
of the nation. Since the American people are exceedingly fond 
of excitements and sensations, the expectation of trouble in Con- 
gress drew immense numbers to its galleries on the first day of 
the session. Lovers of sensation were doomed to disappointment. 
Correspondents and reporters for the press, who were prepared to 
furnish for the newspapers descriptions of an opening of Congress 
"dangerously boisterous," were compelled to describe it as "ex- 
ceptionally quiet." 

The cause of this unexpected state of things was the faet that 
the majority had previously come to the wise conclusion that 
it would not be well to pass upon the admission of Southern 
members in open session and amid the confusion of organization. 
As there was so much diiference of opinion concerning the status 
of the communities recently in rebellion, and such a variety of 
considerations must be regarded in reaching wise conclusions, it 
3 



34 THE THIRTY- iN'IMTH COKGBESS. 

was deemed advisable that the Avhole subject should be calmly 
and deliberately investigated by a select number of able and 
patriotic men from both Houses of Congress. 

Accordingly, on the first day of the session, soon after the 
House was organized, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens offered the follow- 
ing important Resolution: 

^'■Resolved, by the Senate and House of Eepresentatives in Congress as- 
sembled, that a joint committee of fifteen members shall be appointed, nine 
of whom shall be mem1)ers of the House, and six members of the Senate, 
who shall inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called 
Confederate States of America, and report whether they or any of them are 
entitled to be represented in either House of Congress, with leave to report 
at any time by bill or otherwise; and until such report shall have been 
made, and finally acted upon by Congress, no member shall be received into 
either House from any of the said so-called Confederate States; and all 
papers relating to the representation of the said States shall be referred to 
the said committee without debate." 

To avoid the delay occasioned by a protracted debate, Mj. Ste- 
vens called the previous question. The minority perceived the 
impossibility of preventing the final passage of the resolution, 
yet deemed it their duty to put it off as far as possible by their 
only available means — "dilatory motions." They first objected 
to the introduction of the resolution, under the rule that unani- 
mous consent must be given to permit a resolution to come before 
the House without notice given on a previous day. To meet this 
difficulty, Mr. Stevens moved to suspend the rules to enable him 
to introduce the resolution. On this motion the yeas and nays 
were demanded. To suspend the rules under such circumstances 
required a two-thirds' vote, which was given — one hundred and 
twenty-nine voting for, and thirty-five against the motion. The 
rules having been suspended, the resolution was regularly before 
the House. A motion was then made to lay the resolution on the 
table, and the yeas and nays demanded. Thirty-seven w^ere in 
favor of the motion, and one hundred and thirty-three against 
it. Before a call for the previous question is available to cut off 
debate, it must, by the rules of the House, be seconded by one- 
fifth of the members present. This having been done, the vote 
was taken by yeas and nays on the concurrent resolution sub^ 
mitted by Mr. Stevens. One hundred and thirty-three voted in 
favor of the resolution, and thirty-six against it, while^ thirteen 



OK BECOMSTKUCTIOJf. 35 

were reported as "not voting." As this vote was on an impor- 
tant measure, and is significant as marking with considerable 
accuracy the political complexion of the Plouse of Representa- 
tives, it should be given in detail. 

The following are the names of those who voted " Yea :" 

Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, 
Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwcll, Bingham, Blow, Boutwell, Brandagee, 
Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundj, Reader W. Clark, Sidney Clark, 
Cobb, Conkling, Cook, CuUom, Culver, Darling, Davis, Dawes, Defrees, De- 
lano, Doming, Dixon, Donnelly, Driggs, Dumont, Eckley, Eggleston, Eliot, 
Farnsworth, Ferry, Garfield, Crinnell, Griswold, Hale, Abner C. Harding, 
Hart, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asabel 
W. Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, 
.lames R Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Julian, 
Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketchum, Kuykendall, Laflin, Latham, George V. 
Lawrence, "William Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, 
McClurg, McTndoe, McKee, McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, 
Morris, Moulton, Myers, Newell, O'Neill, Orthe, Paine, Patterson, Perham, 
Phelps, Pike, Pomeroy, Price, William H. Randall, Raymond, Alexander H. 
Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Smith, 
Spaulding^ Starr, Stevens, Stillwell, Thayer, John L. Thomas, Trowbridge, 
Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert Van Horn, Ward, Warner, 
Elihu B. Washburne, Welker, Wentworth, Whaley, Williams, James F. 
Wilson, Windom, and Woodbridge. 

The following members voted " Nay :" 

Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Boyer, Brooks, Chanler, Dawson, Denison, 
Eldridge, Finck, Glossbrenner, Goodyear, Grider, Aaron Harding, Hogan, 
Tames M. Humphrey, Johnson, Kerr, LeBlond, McCullough, Niblack, 
Nicholson, Noell, Radford, Samuel J. Randall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Shank- 
lin, Sitgreaves, Strouse, Tabor, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Winfield, and 
Wright. 

The following are reported as " not voting :" 

Messrs. Delos R. Ashley, James M. Ashley, Blaine, Farquhar, Harris, 
Edwin N. Hubbell, Jones, Marshall, Plants, Rousseau, Sloan, Francis 
Thomas, Voorhees, and William B. Washburn. 

Thus the resolution passed the House. The immense size of 
this body required that, by stringent rule, debate should have 
limitation, and even sometimes be cut off altogether by the opera- 
tion of previous question. This arrangement enabled skillful and 
resolute leaders to carry through this measure within an hour's 
time, whereas, in the Senate, a body of less than one-third the 



S6 THE THIBTY-J^IMTH COJ^'GRESS. 

size, it passed after a delay of several days, and at the end of a 
discussion of considerable length. 

On the day following the jiassage of the resolution in the 
House of Representatives, it was read in the Senate. Mr. John- 
son, of Maryland, objecting to its being considered on the day of 
its reception, under a regulation of the Senate it was postponed. 

After the lapse of a week, on Tuesday, December 12, the 
resolution was taken up for consideration in the Senate. Mr. 
Anthony moved to amend the enacting clause so as to change it 
from a joint resolution to a concurrent resolution, since, under its 
original shape, it would require the President's aj)provaL 

This amendment having been made, Mr. Anthony moved to ' 
further amend the resolution by striking out all after the word 
"otherwise." The following are the words proposed to be 
stricken out: 

"And until such report shall .have been made and finally acted on by 
Congress, no member shall be received ijito either house from any of the 
said so-called Confederate States; and all papers relating to the representa- 
tion of said States shall be referred to the said committee without debate." 

]Mr. Howard, of Michigan, preferred the resolution as it came 
from the House of Representatives. " It contains within itself a 
pledge on the part of the two houses, that until the report of this 
important committee shall have been presented, we will not re- 
admit any of the rebel States, eitlier by the recognition of their 
Senators or their Representatives. I think the country expects 
nothing less than this at our hands. I think that portion of the 
loyal people of the United States who have sacrificed so much 
of blood and treasure in the prosecution of the M^ar, and Avho 
secured to us the signal victory Avhich we have achieved over 
the rebellion, have a right to at least this assurance at our hands, 
that neither house of Congress will recognize as States any one 
of the rebel States until the event to which I have alluded. 

" Sir, what is the present position and status of the rebel States? 
In my judgment they are simply conquered communities, subju- 
gated by the arms of the United States ; communities in which 
the right of self-government does not now exist. AVhy? Because J 

they have been for the last four years hostile, to the most surpris- I 

ing unanimity hostile, to the authority of the United States, and 1 

have, during that period, been waging a bloody war against that 



OjY RECOMSTRUCTIOJf. 37 

authority. They arc simply conqucrcfi communities, and we hold 
them, as wc know well, as the world knows to-day, not by their 
own free will and consent as members of the Union, but solely by 
virtue of our military power, Avhich is executed to that effect 
throughout the length and breadth of the rebel States. There is 
in those States no rightful authority, according to my view, at this 
time, but that of the United States ; and every political act, every 
governmental act exercised within their limits, must necessarily 
be exercised and performed under the sanction and by the will of 
the conqueror. 

" In short, sir, they are not to-day loyal States ; their population 
are not willing to-day, if we are rightly informed, to perform 
peaceably, quietly, and efficiently the duties which pertain to the 
population of a State in the Union and of the Union ; and for 
one I can not consent to recognize them, even indirectly, as en- 
titled to be represented in either house of Congress at this time. 
The time has not yet come, in my judgment, to do this. I think 
that, under present circumstances, it is due to the country that 
we should give them the assurance that we will not thus hastily 
readmit to seats in the legislative bodies here the representatives 
of constituencies who are still hostile to the authority of the 
United States. I think that such constituencies are not entitled 
to be represented here." 

Mr. Anthony, of Ehode Island, said : " The amendment was 
proposed from no opposition to what I understand to be the 
purpose of the words stricken out. That purpose I understand 
to be that both houses shall act in concert in any measures 
which they may take for the reconstruction of the States lately 
in rebellion. I think that that object is eminently desirable, and 
not only that the two houses shall act in concert, but that Con- 
gress shall act in concert with the Executive; that all branches 
of the Government shall approach this great question in a spirit 
of comprehensive patriotism, with confidence in each other, with 
a conciliatory temper toward each other, and that each branch of 
the Government will be ready, if necessary, to concede something 
of their own views in order to meet the views of those who are 
equally charged with the responsibility of public affairs. 

"The words proposed to be stricken out refer to the joint 
committee of the two houses of Congress matters which the Con- 
stitution confides to each house separately. Each house is made, 



88 THE THIRTY-KINTH COJ^GEESS. 

by the Constitution, the jud*ge of the elections, returns, and quah*- 
fications of its own members. 

"There is one other reason why I move this amendment, and 
that is, that the resokition provides that papers shall be referred 
to this committee without debate. This is contrary to the prac- 
tice of the Senate. The House of Eejiresentatives has found it 
necessary, for the orderly transaction of its business, to put limi- 
tations upon debate, hence the previous question and the hour 
rule ; but the Senate has always resisted every proposition of this 
kind, and submitted to any inconvenience rather than check free 
discussion. Senators around me, who were here in the minority, 
felt that the right of debate was a very precious one to them at 
that time, and, as it was not taken from them, they are not dis- 
posed to take it from the minority now. 

" The purpose of all that is stricken out can be eifected by the 
separate action of the two houses, if they shall so elect. The 
House of Representatives, having passed this resolution by a great 
vote, will undoubtedly adopt, in a separate resolution, what is 
here stricken out ; and, except so far as relates to the restriction 
upon debate, I shall, if this amendment be adopted and the reso- 
lution passed, oifer a resolution substantially declaring it to be 
the opinion of the Senate that, until this committee rejjorts — 
presuming that it will report in a reasonable time — no action 
should be taken upon the representation of the States lately in 
rebellion." 

Mr. Doolittle, of "Wisconsin, said : "All of these great ques- 
tions, concerning reconstruction, pacification, and restoration of 
civil government in the Southern States, representation in this 
body, or any thing which concerns of Federal relations with the 
several States, ought to be referred to the Committee on the Judi- 
ciary. Such has been the practice of this Government from the 
beginning. Great questions of constitutional law, questions con- 
cerning the relations of the Union to the States and the States to 
the Union, and above all, and without any exception, all ques- 
tions relating to representation in this body, to its membership, 
have always been referred to the Judiciary Committee. 

" There is nothing in the history of the Senate, there is nothing 
in the constitution of this committee, which would send these 
great constitutional questions for advisement and consideration 
to any other committee than the Committee on the Judiciary. 



OJf BECOJ^STRUCTIOJf. 39 

To place their consideration in the hands of a committee which 
is beyond the control of tlie Senate, is to distrust ourselves; and 
to vote to send their consideration to any other committee, is 
equivalent to a vote of want of confidence in the Judiciary Com- 
mittee. 

"I object to this resolution, because, upon these great questions 
which are to go to the joint committee, the Senate does not stand 
upon an equality with the House. This resolution provides that, 
of the joint committee of fifteen, nine sliall be appointed by the 
House of Representatives, six only by the Senate, giving to the 
House portion of the committee a majority of three. Wc all 
know that in joint committees the members vote, not as the 
representatives of the two houses, but jjcr capita. The vote of a 
member of the committee from the House weighs precisely the 
same as the vote of a member of the committee from the Senate; 
so that, to all intents and purposes, if we j)ass this concurrent 
resolution, which we can not rej)eal but by the concurrence of 
the other house, we place the consideration of these grave ques- 
tions in the hands of a committee w^hich w'e can not control, and 
in which we have no equal voice. 

"Under the Constitution, upon all subjects of legislation but 
one, the two houses are equal and coordinate branches of Con- 
gress. That one relates to their representation in the bodies, to 
their membership, that which constitutes their existence, which 
is essential to their life and their independence. That is confided 
to each house, and to each house alone, to act for itself. It judges 
for itself upon the elections, returns, and qualifications of its 
members. It judges, it admits, it punishes, it expels. It can 
not share that responsibility with any other department of the 
Government. It can no more share it wdth the other hotlse than 
it can share it with the Supreme Court or w^ith tlie President. 
It is a matter over which its jurisdiction is exclusive of every 
other jurisdiction. It is a matter in which its decisions, right 
or wa-ong, are absolute and without appeal. In my opinion the 
Senate of the United States can not give to a committee beyond 
its control this question of the representation in this body, with- 
out a loss of its self-resj)ect, its dignity, its indejiendence ; with- 
out an abandonment of its constitutional duty and a surrender 
of its constitutional powers. 

"There is another provision in this resolution, as it stands. 



40 THE teibtt-jvuvtb: coj^geess. 

that we shall refer every paper to the committee without debate. 
Yes, sir, the Senate of the United States is to be led like a lamb 
to the slaughter, bound hand and foot, shorn of its constitutional 
power, and gagged, dumb, like the sheep brought to the block ! 
Is this the condition to which the Senator from INIichigan pro- 
poses to reduce the Senate of the United States by insisting upon 
such a provision as that contained in the resolution as it comes 
from the House of Representatives ? 

"There is a still graver objection to this resolution as it stands. 
The provision that 'until such report shall have been made and 
finally acted on by Congress, no member shall be received into 
either house from any of the so-called Confederate States,' is a 
provision which, by law, excludes those eleven States from their 
representation in the Union. Sir, pass that resolution as it stands, 
and let it receive the signature of the President, and you have 
accomplished what the rebellion could not accomplish, what the 
sacrifice of half a million men could not accomplish in warring 
against this Government — you have dissolved the Union by act 
of Congress. Sir, are we prepared to sanction that? I trust 
never. 

" The Senator from Michigan talks about the status of these 
States. He may very properly raise the question whether they 
have any Legislatures that are capable of electing Senators to this 
body. That is a question of fact to be considered; but as to 
whether they are States, and States still within the Union, not- 
withstanding their civil form of government has been overturned 
by the rebellion, and their Legislatures have been disorganized, 
that they are still States in this Union is the most sacred truth 
and the dearest truth to every American heart, and it will be 
maintaified by the American people against all opposition, come 
from what quarter it may. Sir, the flag that now floats on the 
top of this Capitol bears thirty-six stars. Every star represents a 
State in this Union. I ask the Senator from Michigan, does that 
flag, as it floats there, speak the nation's truth to our people and 
to the world, or is it a hypocritical, flaunting lie ? That flag has 
been, borne at the head of our conquering legions through the 
whole South, planted at Vicksburg, planted at Columbia, Savan- 
nah, Charleston, Sumter.; the same old flag which came down 
before the rebellion at Sumter was raised up again, and it still 
bore the same glorious stars ; ' not a star obscured,' not one. 



OJ^ BECOjYSTRUCTIOJ^. u 

"These people have been disorganized in their civil govern- 
ments in consequence of the war ; the rebels overturned civil gov- 
ernment in the first place, and we entered with our armies and 
captured the rebellion; but did that destroy the States? Not at 
all. We entered the States to save them, not to destroy them. 
The guarantee of the Constitution is a guarantee to the States, 
and to every one of the States, and the obligation that rests upon 
us is to guarantee to South Carolina a republican form of govern- 
ment as a State in this Union, and not as a Territory. No State 
nor the people of any State had any power to withdraw from the 
Union. They could not do it peacefully ; they undertook to do it 
by arms. AYe crushed the attempt; we trampled their armies 
under our feet; we captured the rebellion; the States are ours; 
and we entered them to save, and not to destroy. 

" The Constitution of the United States requires the President, 
from time to time, to give to Congress information of the state of 
the Union. Who has any right to presume that the President 
will not furnish the information which his constitutional duty re- 
quires? He has at his control all the agencies which are neces- 
sary. There is the able Cabinet who surround him, with all the 
officers appointed under them : the post-masters under the Post- 
office Department, the treasury agents under the Treasury Dejiart- 
ment, and almost two hundred thousand men under the control 
of the War Department, in every part of this ' disaffi^cted ' region, 
who can bring to the President information from every quarter 
of all the transactions that exist there. That the President of 
•the United States will be sustained, in the views which he takes 
in his message, by the people of this country, is as certain as the 
revolutions of the earth ; and it is our duty to act harmoniously 
with him, to sustain him, to hold up his hands, to strengthen his 
heart, to speak to him words of faith, friendship, and courage. 

" I know that in all these Southern States there are a thousand 
things to give us pain, sometimes alarm, but notwithstanding the 
bad appearance which from time to time presents itself in the 
midst of that boiling caldron of passion and excitement which 
the war has left still raging there, the real progress which we 
have made has been most wonderful. I am one of those who 
look forward with hope, for I believe God reigns and rules in 
the affiiirs of mankind. I look beyond the excitement of the 
hour and all the outbreaking passion which sometimes shows 



1^2 THE TinETY-J{IJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

itself in the South, which leads them to make enactments in their 
Legislatures which are disgraceful to themselves, and can never be 
sanctioned by the people of this country, and also in spite of all 
the excitement of the North, I behold the future full of confi- 
dence and hope. We have only to come up like men, and stand 
as the real friends of the country and the Administration, and 
give to the policy of the President a fair and substantial trial, and 
all will be well." 

Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, then remarked : " When this resolu- 
tion was first promulgated in the newspapers as having been 
agreed uj)on, I approved it because I sympathized with its object 
and jiurpose. I did not examine it particularly; but, looking 
simply at what it was designed for, it met my approbation simply 
for this reason: that this question of the readmission of these 
Confederate States, so called, and all the questions connected with 
that subject, I conceived to be of infinite importance, requiring 
calm and serious consideration, and I believe that the appoint- 
ment of a committee, carefully selected by the two houses, to 
take that subject into consideration, was not only Avise in itself, 
but an imperative duty resting upon the representatives of the 
people in the two branches of Congress. For myself, I was not 
prepared to act upon that question at once. ' I am not one of those 
who pin their faith upon any body, however eminent in position, 
or conceive themselves obliged, on a question of great national 
importance, to follow out any body's opinions simply because he 
is in a position to make those opinions, perhaps, somewhat more 
imperative than any other citizen of the republic. Talk about 
thp Administration! Sir, we are a part of the Administration, 
and a very important part of it. I have no idea of abandoning 
the prerogatives, the rights, and the duties of my ^losition in 
favor of any body, however that person or any number of persons 
may desire it. In saying this, I am not about to express an 
opinion upon the subject any further than I have exjjressed it, 
and that is, that in questions of such infinite importance as this, 
involving the integrity and welfare of the rej^ublic in all future 
time, we are solemnly bound, and our constituents will demand 
of us that we examine them with care and fidelity, and act on our 
own convictions, and not upon the convictions of others. 

" I do not agree with the honorable Senator from Wisconsin, 
that by passing a simple resolution raising a committee of our 



OJ^ BECOJVSTEUCTIOJf. 43 

own body, and referring to it certain papers, if we conclude to do 
so, we are infringing upon the rights of any body or making an 
intimation with regard to any policy that the President may have 
seen fit to adopt and recommend to the country. Sir, I trust 
there are no such things as exclusive friends of the President 
among us, or gentlemen who desire to be so considered. I have 
as much respect for the President of the United States probably 
as any man. I acted with him long, and I might express the 
favorable ojnnions which I entertain of him here, if they would 
not be out of place and in bad taste in this body. That I am 
disposed and ready to support him to the best of my ability, as 
every gentleman around me is, in good faith and with kind feel- 
ing in all that he may desire that is consistent with my views of 
duty to the country, giving him credit for intentions as good as 
mine, and with ability far greater, I am ready to asseverate. ' 

" But, sir, I do not agree with the doctrine, and I desire to en- 
ter my dissent to it now and here, that, because a certain line of 
policy has been adopted by one branch of the Government, or 
certain vievv's are entertained by one branch of the Government, 
therefore, for that reason alone and none other, that is to be tried, 
even if it is against my judgment ; and I do not say that it is or 
is not. That is a question to be considered. I have a great re- 
spect, not for myself, perhaps, but for the position which I hold 
as a Senator of the United States ; and no measure of Govern- 
ment, no policy of the President, or of the head of a dcj^artment, 
shall pass me while I am a Senator, if I know it, until I have 
examined it and given my assent to it ; not on account of the 
source from which it emanates, but on account of its own intrin- 
sic merits, and because I believe it will result in the good of my 
country. That is my duty as a Senator, and I fear no miscon- 
struction at home on this subject or any other. 

"Now, therefore, sir, I hope that, laying aside all these mat- 
ters, which are entirely foreign, we shall act ujjon this resolution 
simply as a matter of business. No one has a right to complain 
of it that we raise a committee for certain purposes of our own 
when we judge it to be necessary. It is an im2mtation upon no- 
body; it is an insult to nobody; it is not any thing which any 
sensible man could ever find fault with, or be disposed to do so. 
It is our judgment, our deliberate judgment, our friendly judg- 
ment — a course of action adopted from regard to the good of the 



44 THE THIRTY- J^IJfTH CONGRESS. 

community, and that good of the community comprehends the 
good of every individual in it." 

INIr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, said: "This resolution is -^ry 
objectionable to my mind. It is for the appointment of a com- 
mittee of the two houses to determine and to report upon what? 
The right of representation of eleven States in this body. What 
determines the rights of those States to representation here? Is 
it the views of the members of the House of Representatives? 
Do we stand in need of any light, however bright it may be, that 
may come from that distinguished quarter? Are we going to 
ask them to illuminate us by wisdom, and report the fact to us 
whether those States are entitled to representation on this floor? 

" Mr. President, on the first day of your assemblage after the 
battle of Manassas, you and they declared, by joint resolution, 
that the object for which the war was waged was for no purpose 
of conquest or subjugation, but it Avas to preserve the union of 
the States, and to maintain the rights, dignity, and equality of 
the several States unimpaired. While that war was being waged 
there w^as no action, either of this house, or of the House of 
Representatives, declaring that, when it was over, the existence 
of those States should be ignored, or their right to representation 
in Congress denied. Throughout the. whole contest the battle- 
cry was ' the preservation of the Union ' and ' the Union of the 
States.' If there was a voice then raised that those States had 
ceased to have an existence in this body, it was so feeble as to be 
passed by and totally disregarded. 

" Sir, suppose this committee should report that those States are 
not entitled to representation in this body, are you bound by their 
action ? Is there not a higher law, the supreme law of the land, 
which says if they be States that they shall each be entitled to two 
Senators on this floor ? And shall a report of a joint committee 
of the two houses override and overrule the fundamental law of 
the land ? Sir, it is dangerous as a precedent, and I protest against 
it as an humble member of this body. If they be not States, then 
the object avowed for which the war was waged was false." 

Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, said : " I shall vote against this 
resolution because it refers to a joint committee a subject Avhich, 
according to my judgment, belongs exclusively to the Senate. I 
know that the resolution no longer provides in express terms that 
the Senate, pending the continuance of the investigation of this 



OJ^ EECOiN'STRUCTIOJf. 45 

committee, will not consider the question of credentials from these 
States, but in cifect it amounts to that. The question is to be 
referred to the committee, and according to usage, and it would 
seem to be the very purpose of reference that the body shall not 
consider the subject while the question is before them. I could 
not vote for a resolution that refers to a joint committee a subject 
that this body alone can decide. If thei^ are credentials presented 
here, this body must decide the question whether the person pre- 
senting the credentials is entitled to a seat; and how can this 
body be influenced by any committee other than a committee 
that it shall raise itself?" 

Mr. .Trumbull, of Illinois, then followed : " If I understood 
the resolution as the Senator from Indiana does, I should cer- 
tainly vote with him; but I do not so understand it. • It is 
simply a resolution that a joint committee be raised to inquire 
into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Con- 
federate States of America, and to report whether they or any 
of them are entitled to be represented in either House of Con- 
gress, with leave to report at any time by bill or otherwise. It 
is true, as the Senator says, that after having raised this commit- 
tee, the Senate will not be likely to take action in regard to the 
admission of the Senators from any of these States until the 
committee shall have had a reasonable time at least to act and 
report ; but it is very desirable that we should have joint action 
upon this subject. It would produce a very awkward and unde- 
sirable state of things if the House of Representatives were to 
admit members from one of the lately rebellious States, and the 
Senate were to refuse to receive Senators from the same State. 

" We all know that the State organizations in certain States of 
the Union have been usurped and overthrown. This is a fact of 
which we must officially take notice. There was a time when the 
Senator from Indiana, as well as myself, would not have thought 
of receiving a Senator from the Legislature, or what purported to 
be the Legislature, of South Carolina. When the people of that 
State, by their Representatives, undertook to withdraw from the 
Union and set up an independent government in that State, in 
hostility to the Union, when the body acting as a Legislature 
there was avowedly acting against this Government, neither he 
nor I Avould have received Representatives from it. That was a 
usurpation which, by force of arms, we have put down. Now the 



46 THE THIBTY-jYLYTH COJ^GRESS. 

question arises, Has a State government since been inaugurated 
there entitled to representation ? Is not that a fair subject of 
inquiry ? Ought we not to be satisfied ui3on that point ? We do 
not make such an inquiry in reference to members that come from 
States which have never undertaken to deny their allegiance to 
the Government of the United States. Having once been ad- 
mitted as States, they continue so until by some positive act they 
throw off their allegiance, and assume an attitude of hostility to 
the Government, and make war ujion it ; and while in that con- 
dition, I know we should all object that they, of course, could not 
be represented in the Congress of the United States. ]S'ow, is it 
not a proper subject for inquiry to ascertain whether they have 
assumed a position in harmony with the Government? and is it 
not proper that that inquiry should be made the subject of joint 
action ? " 

Mr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, wished to ask the friends of this 
resolution if it was contemplated that this committee should take 
evidence, and report that evidence to the two houses. " If," said 
he, " they are only to take what is open to every member of the 
Senate, the fact that the rebellion has been suppressed; the fact 
that the President of the United States has appointed officers to 
collect the taxes, and, in some instances, judges and other officers; 
that he has sent the post-office into all the States ; that there have 
been found enough individuals loyal to the country to accept the 
offices ; the fact that the President has issued his proclamation to 
all these States, apjjointing Provisional Governors; that they have 
all elected conventions ; that the conventions have rescinded the 
ordinances of secession ; that most of them have amended their 
constitutions and abolished slavery, and tlie Legislatures of some 
of them have passed the amendment to the Constitution on the 
subject of slavery — if they are only to take these facts, which are 
open and clear to us all, I can see no necessity for such a com- 
mittee. My principal objection to the resolution is, that this 
committee can give us no information which we do not now 
possess, coupled with the fact that the loyal conservative men of 
the United States, North, South, East, and West, do most 
earnestly desire that we shall so act that there shall be no longer 
a doubt that we are the United States of America, in full accord 
and harmony with each other. 



OjY RECOJ^STRUCTIOjY. 



47 



"I know it has been said that the President had no anthority 
to do these things. I read the Constitution and the laws of this 
country differently. He is to 'take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed;' he is to suppress insurrection and rebellion. The 
power is put in his hands, and I do not sec why, when he marches 
into a rebel State, he has not authority to put down a rebel gov- 
ernment and put up a government that is friendly to the United 
States, and in accordance with it. I do not see why he can not 
do that while the war goes on, and I do not see why he may not 
do it after the war is over. The people in those States lie at the 
mercy of the nation. I see no usurpation in what he has done, 
and if the work is well done, I, for one, am ready to accept it. 
Are we to send out a commission to see what the men whom he 
has appointed have done ? It is said that they are not. to be 
relied on ; that they have been guilty of treason, and we will not 
trust them. I hope that no such ideas will prevail here. I think 
this will be a cold shock to the warm feelings of the nation for 
restoration, for equal privileges and equal rights. They were in 
insurrection. We have suppressed that insurrection. They are 
now States of the Union ; and if they come here according to the 
laws of the States, they are entitled, in my judgment, to repre- 
sentation, and w^e have no right to refuse it. They are in a 
minority, and they would be in a minority even if they meant 
now what they felt when they t-aised their arms against the 
Government; but they do not, and of those whom they will 
send here to represent them, nineteen out of twenty will be just 
as loyal as any of us — even some of those who took up arms 
against us. 

" I really hope to see some one move a modification of the test 
oath, so that those who have repented of their disloyalty may 
not be excluded, for I really believe that a great many of those 
who took up arms honestly and wished to carry out the doctrines 
of secession, and who have succumbed under the force of our 
arms and the great force of public opinion, can be trusted a great 
deal more than those who did not fight at all. 

"To conclude, gentlemen, I see no great harm in this resolu- 
tion except the procrastination that will result from it, and that 
will give us nothing but what we have before us." 

The question being taken, the resolution, as amended, passed 
the Senate, thirty-three voting in the affirmative and eleven in 



4S THE THIRTT-JSriJiTH COJVGBESS. 

the negative. The following are the names of those who voted 
for the resolution: 

Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Creswell, Fessenden, 
Foot, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Howard, Howe, Lane of Indiana, Lane of 
Kansas, Morgan, Morrill, Norton, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, 
Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, W^illey, Williams, 
Wilson, and Yates. 

The following Senators voted against the resolution : 

Messrs.' Buckalew, Cowan, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, 
Riddle, Saulsbury, Stockton, and Wright. 

Five Senators were absent : Messrs. Cragin, Davis, Henderson, 
McDougall, and Nesmith. 

On the day succeeding the adoption of the concurrent resolu- 
tion by the Senate, the amendments of that body came before the 
House of Eepresentatives. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens moved that 
the House concur in the amendments of the Senate. He said : 
"The Senate took what to them appeared to be the proper view 
of their prerogatives, and, though they did not seem to differ 
with us as to the main object, the mode of getting at it with 
them was essential, and they very properly put the resolution in 
the shape they considered right. They have changed the form 
of the resolution so as not to require the assent of the President ; 
and they have also considered that each house should determine 
for itself as to the reference of papers, by its own action at the 
time. To this I see no objection, and, while moving to concur, 
I will say now, that when it- is in order I shall move, or some 
other gentleman will move when his State is called, a resolution 
precisely similar, or very nearly similar, to the provision which 
the Senate has stricken out, only applicable to the Hoiise alone." 

The House then concurred in the amendments of the Senate, 
so the resolution passed in the following form: 

'■^Resolved, by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring). That 
a joint committee of fifteen members shall be appointed, nine of whom shall 
be members of the House, and six members of the Senate, who shall inquire 
into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate 
States of America, and report whether they, or any of them, are entitled to 
bo represented in either house of Congress, with leave to report at any time, 
by bill or otherwise." 



ojr EECOMSTnuciio.^. 40 

A resolution subsequently passed the House, "That all papers 
oiFered relative to the representation of the late so-called Confed- 
erate States of America, shall be referred to the joint committee 
of fifteen without debate, and no members shall be admitted from 
either of said so-called States until Congress shall declare such 
States entitled to representation." 

On the fourteenth of December the Speaker announced the 
names of the committee on the part of the House. They were : 
Thaddeus Stevens, Elihu B. Washburn, Justin S. Morrill, Henry 
Grider, John A. Bingham, Roscoe Conkling, George S. Boutwell, 
Henry T. Blow, and Andrew J. Rogers. 

On the twenty-first of December the following gentlemen were 
announced as members of the committee on the jjart of the Senate : 
William Pitt Fessenden, James W. Grimes, Ira Harris, Jacob M. 
Howard, Reverdy Johnson, and George H. Williams. 

Thus, before the adjournment of Congress for the holidays, 
the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction had been ap- 
pointed and empowered to proceed with investigations of the 
utmost importance to the country. Hated by the late insurgents 
of the South, who expected little leniency at its hands; opposed 
by politicians at the North, who viewed it as an obstacle in the 
way of their designs, and even misrepresented by the President 
nimself, who stigmatized it as a "Central Directory," this com- 
mittee went forward in the discharge of its important duties, 
without fear or favor, having a marked influence upon the doings 
of Congress and the destinies of the country. 

Meanwhile other important measures were enlisting the atten- 
tion of Congress, and were proceeding, by the slow but steady 
steps of parliamentary progress, to their final consummation. 
4 



50 THE THIRTT-JilJiTH COJfGBESS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SUFFRAGE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 

Ddtt of Coxgress to legislate for the District of Columbia — Suffrage 
Bill introduced into the House — Speech by Mr. Wilson — Mr. Boter 
— Mr. Schofield — Mr. Kelley — Mr. 'Rogers — Mr. Farnsworth — Mr. 
Davis — Mr. Chanler — Mr. Bingham — Mr. Grinnell — Mr. Easson — 
Mr. Julian — Mr. Thomas — Mr. Darling — Mr. Hale's amendment — Mr. 
Thayer — Mr. Van Horn — Mr. Clarke — Mr. Johnson — Mr. Boutavell. 

WHATEVER differences of opinion may exist as to the 
authority of Congress to legi.slate for States loyal or dis- 
loyal, or for Territories, there is entire unanimity as to the 
power and duty of Congress to enact laws for the District of Co- 
lumbia. Here there is no countercurrent of "reserved rights" 
or " State sovereignty " opposed to the authority of Congress. 

Congress being responsible for the legislation of the District 
of Columbia, w^e naturally look in that direction for an exhibition 
in miniature of the policy of the national legislature on questions 
relating to the interests of the nation at large. If slavery flour- 
ished and the slave-market existed in the capital, it was because 
a majority of the people of the United States were willing. So 
soon as the nation became antislavery, the "peculiar institution" 
could no longer exist in the District of Columbia, although it 
might still survive in other localities. 

The General Government having become completely disen- 
thralled from the dominion of slavery, and a widc-sjiroad ojsinion 
prevailing at the North that all loyal men should enjoy the right 
of suffrage, the members of the Thirty-ninth Congress convened 
with a sense of duty impelling them to begin the great work of 
political reform at the capital itself. Hence INIr. Wade, as we 
have seen, on the first day of the session, introduced "Senate bill 
Number One," designed, as its title declared, "to regulate the 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 51 

elective franchise in tlie District of Columbia." In the House 
of Representatives, on the second day of the session, Mr. Kel- 
ley introduced "a bill extending the right of suffrage in the 
District of Columbia." This bill was referred to the Judiciary 
Committee. 

In the House of Representatives, on the 18th of December, 
Mr. Wilson, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, re- 
ported a bill extending the right of suffrage in the District of 
Columbia. The bill provided that from all laws and parts of 
laws prescribing the qualification of electors for any office in the 
District of Columbia, the word " white " should be stricken out ; 
also, that from and after the passage of the bill, no person should 
be disqualified from voting at any election held in the District of 
Columbia on account of color ; also, that all acts of Congress, and 
all laws of the State of Maryland in force in the District of 
Columbia, and all ordinances of the cities of Washington and 
Georgetown inconsistent with the provisions of the bill, should be 
repealed and annulled. 

This bill was made the special order for Wednesday the 10th of 
January. 

]Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, whose duty it was, as chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, to report the bill, opened the discussion by 
speaking as follows in favor of the measure : 

"Can we excuse ourselves in continuing a liAiitation on the 
right of suffrage in the capital of the republic that has no justifi- 
c-ation in reason, justice, or .in the principles on which we profess 
to have based our entire political system ? Upon this question 
there seems to have been but little difference of opinion among 
the men who laid the foundation and built the superstructure of 
this Government. In those days no limitation was placed upon 
the enjoyment of the defensive rights of the citizen, including 
the right of suffrage, on account of the color of the skin, except 
in the State of South Carolina. All of the other States partici- 
pating in the formation of the Government of the United States 
had some limitation, based on sex, or age, or property placed 
upon the right of suffrage; but none of them so far forgot the 
spirit of our Constitution, the great words of the Declaration of 
Independence, or the genius of our institutions, as to inquire into 
the color of a citizen before allowing him the great defensive right 
of the ballot. It is true, that as the republic moved off in its 



5% THE THIBTT-JflMTH CONGRESS. 

grand course among the nations a change occurrccl in the minds 
and practices of the jieople of a majority of the States. The love 
of liberty, because of its own great self, and .not because of its 
application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive charac- 
ter and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became 
dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to 
all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public 
conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears 
stuffed with cotton. When these things succeeded the active jus- 
tice, abounding mercy, and love of human rights of the earlier 
days. State after State fell into the dark line of South Carolinian 
oppression, and adopted her anti-republican limitation of the 
right of suifrage. A few States stood firm and kept their faith, 
and to-day, when compared with the bruised and peeled and op- 
pression-cursed State of South Carolina, stand forth as shining 
examples of the great rewards that are poured upon the heads of 
the just. Massachusetts and South Carolina, the one true, the 
other false to the faith and ideas of the early life of the nation, 
should teach us how safe it is to do right, and how dangerous it 
is to do wrong; how much safer it is to do justice than it is to 
practice oppression. 

" But, sir, not the States alone fell into this grievous error. 
The General Government took its stand upon the side of injus- 
tice, and apostatized from the true faith of the nation, by depriv- 
ing a portion of its citizens of the political 'right of self-defense, 
the use of the ballot. What good has come to us from this apos- 
tasy? Take the history of the municipal go-^ernment of this city, 
and what is there in its pages to make an American feel proud 
of the results of this departure from the principles of true de- 
mocracy? Is there a worse governed city in all the republic? 
Where in all the country was there to be found such evidences 
of thriftless dependence as in this city before the cold breath of 
the North swept down here during the rebellion and imf)arted a 
little of ' Yankee ' vigor to its business and population ? Where 
within the bounds of professed fidelity to the Government was 
true loyalty at a lower ebb, and sympathy with the rebellion at 
higher flood ; freedom more hated, and emancipation more roundly 
denounced; white troops harder to raise, and black ones more 
heartily despised; Union victories more coldly received, and re- 
verses productive of less despondency, than right among that por- 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 53 

tion of the voting population and its adjuncts which control the 
local elections in this District? With what complaisance the 
social elements of this capital fostered the'brood of traitors who 
rushed hence to the service of the rebellion in 1861 ! Are these 
fruits of our errors pleasing ? 

" I would not be vindictive, I would be just. I do not want 
to legislate against the white citizen for the purpose of advancing 
the interests of the colored citizen. It is best to guard against 
all such legislation. Let the laws which we pass here be of such 
pure republican character, that no person can tell from the read- 
ing of them Avhat color is stamped upon the faces of the citizens 
of the United States. Let us have no class legislation, no class 
privileges. Let our laws be just and uniform in their operation. 
This is the smooth sea upon which our ship of state may sail ; 
all others are tempestuous and uncertain. 

* " And now, Mr. Speaker, who are the persons upon whom this 
bill will operate, if we shall place it upon the statute-book of the 
nation? They are citizens of the United States and residents of 
the District of Columbia. It is true that many of them have 
black faces, but that is God's work, and he is wiser than we. 
Some of them have faces marked by colors uncertain ; that is not 
God's fault. Those who hate black men most intensely can tell 
more than all others about this mixture of colors. But, mixed 
or black, they are citizens of this republic, and they have been, 
and are to-day, true and^ loyal to their Government ; and this is 
vastly more than many of their contemners can claim for them- 
selves. In this District a white skin was not the badge of loy- 
alty, while a black skin was. No traitor breathed the air of this 
capital wearing a black skin. Through all the gradations of 
traitors, from "Wirz to Jeff. Davis, criminal eyes beamed from 
white faces. Through all phases of treason, from the bold stroke 
of Lee upon the battle-field to the unnatural sympathy of those 
who lived within this District, but hated the sight of their coun- 
try's flag, runs the blood which courses only under a white sur- 
face. While white men were fleeing from this city to join their 
fortunes with the rebel cause, the returning wave brought black 
faces in their stead. White enemies went out, black friends came 
in. As true as truth itself were these poor men to the cause of this 
imperiled nation. Wherever we have trusted them, they have been 
true. Why ^Yill we not deal justly by them ? Why shall we not, 



54 THE THIRTY-JVIjYTII COXGBESS. 

iu this District, Avlicrc the first effective legislative blow fell upon 
slavery, declare that these suffering, patient, devoted friends of the 
republic shall have the power to protect their own rights by their 
own ballots ? Is it because they are ignorant ? Sir, we are estopped 
from that plea. It comes too late. We did not make this inquiry 
in regard to the white voter. It is only when we see a man with 
a dark skin that we think of ignorance. Let us not stand on this 
now in relation to this District. The fact itself is rapidly passing 
away, for there is no other part of the population of the Dis- 
trict so diligent in the acquisition of knowledge as the colored 
portion. In spite of the difficulties placed in their pathway to 
knowledge by the white residents, the colored people, adults and 
children, are pressing steadily on. 

"Taken as a class, they surely show themselves possessed of 
enough of the leaven of thrift, education, morality, and religion to 
render it safe for us to make the experiment of impartial suffrage 
here. Let us make the trial. A failure can work no great harm, 
for to us belongs the power to make any change which the future 
may show to be necessary. How can we tell whether success or 
failure shall be the fruit of a practical application of the principles 
upon which our institutions rest, unless we put them to a fair test ? 
Give every man a fair chance to show how well he can discharge 
the duties of fully recognized citizenship. Tliis is the Avay to 
solve the problem, and in no other way can it be determined. 
That success w^ill attend the experiment I do not doubt. Others 
believe the result will prove quite the reverse. Who is right and 
who wrong can be ascertained only by putting the two opinions 
to a practical test. The passage of this bill will furnish this test, 
and to that end I ask for it the favorable consideration of this 
house." 

Mr. Boyer, of Pennsylvania, said : " The design of this bill is 
to inaugurate here, upon this most conspicuous stage, the first act 
of the new political drama which is intended to culminate in the 
complete political equality of the races and the establishment of 
neo;ro suiFrase throughout the States. Constitutional amendments 
wdth this view have been already introduced at both ends of the 
Capitol. The object of the leaders of this movement is no longer 
concealed ; and if there is any thing in their action to admire, it 
is the candor, courage, and ability with which they press their 
cause. The agitation is to go on until the question has been set- 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 55 

tied by the country, and it may as well be met here upon tlie 
threshold. The monstrous proposition is nothing less than the 
absorption into the body politic of the nation of a colored popu- 
lation equal to one-sixth of all the inhabitants of the country, as 
the census reports will show. Four millions of the population so 
to be amalgamated have been just set free from a servitude, the 
debasing influences of which have many a time been vividly de- 
picted in the antislavery speeches of the very men who are the 
most prominent champions of this new political gospel. 

" The argument in favor of the American negro's right to vote 
m"ust be measured by his capacity to understand and his ability to 
use such right for the promotion of the public good. And that is 
the very matter in dispute. But the point does not turn simj)ly 
upon the inferiority of the negro race; for differences without 
inferiority may unfit one race for political or social assimilation 
with another, and render their fusion in the same government 
incompatible with the general welfare. It is, as I conceive, 
upon these princij)lcs that we must settle the question whether 
this is a white man's government. 

"The negro has no history of civilization. From the earliest 
ages of recorded time he has ever been a savage or a slave. He 
has populated with teeming millions the vast extent of a conti- 
nent, but in no portion of it has he ever emerged from barbar- 
ism, and in no age or country has he ever established any other 
stable government than a despotism. But he is the most obedi- 
ent and happy of slaves. 

" Of all men, the negroes themselves are best contented with 
their situation. They are not the prime movers in the agitations 
which concern them. An examination of the tables of the last 
census will demonstrate that they do not attach much importance 
to political rights. It will be found that the free people of color 
are most numerous in some of those States which accord them the 
fewest political privileges ; and in those States which have granted 
them the right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. 
In Maryland there were, in 1860, 83,942 free peoj)le of color; in 
Pennsylvania, 56,949 ; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those 
States were they voters. In the State of New York, wliei'e they 
could not vote except under a property qualification, which ex- 
cluded the most of them, they numbered 49,005. But in Mas- 
sachusetts, where they did then and do now vote, there were but 



56 THE TEIBTY-KIKTE COJfGBESS. 

9,602. And in all New England, (except Connecticut, where tliey 
are not allowed to vote,) there were at the last census but 16,084. 
If the American negro, in his desire and capacity for self-govern- 
ment, bore any resemblance to the Caucasian, he would distinguish 
himself by emigration ; and, spurning the soil which had enslaved 
his race, he would seek equality and independence in a more con- 
genial clime. But the spirit of indejjendence and hardy manhood 
which brought the Puritans to the shores of a New England wil- 
derness he lacks. He will not even go to Massachusetts now, 
although, instead of a stormy ocean, his barrier is only an imag- 
inary State line, and instead of a howling wilderness, he is invited 
to a land resounding with the myriad voices of the industrial arts, 
and instead of painted savages with uplifted tomahawks, he has 
reason to expect a crowd of male and female jjhilanthropists, with 
beaming faces and outstretched hands, to welcome him and call 
him brother. There will he find lecturers to prove his equality, 
and statesmen to claim him as an associate ruler in the land. If 
he cares for these things, or is fit for them, why does he linger 
outside upon the very borders of his political Eden ? Why does 
he not enter into it — avoiding Connecticut in his route — and take 
possession ? The fact is, that the fine political theories set up in 
his behalf are not in accordance with the natural instinct of the 
negro, which, in this particular, is truer than the philosophy of 
his white advisers. . 

"They are but superficial thinkers who imagine that the 
organic difierences of races can be obliterated by the education 
of the schools. The qualities of races are perpetuated by descent, 
and are the result of historical influences reaching far back into 
the generations of the past. An educated negro is a negro still. 
The cunning of the chisel of a Canova could not make an endur- 
ing Corinthian column out of a block of anthracite ; not because 
of its color, but on account of the structure of its substance. He 
might indeed, with infinite pains, give it the form, but he could 
not impart to it the strength and adhesion of particles required 
to enable it to brave the elements, and the temple it -was made 
to support would soon crumble into ruin." 

Mr. Schofield, of Pennsylvania, said : " The cheapest elevator 
and best moralizer for an oppressed and degraded class is to in- 
spire them with self-respect, with the belief in the possibility of 
their elevation. Bestow the elective franchise upon the colored 



■ DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 57 

population of this District, and you awaken tlic hope and ambi- 
tion- of the whole race throughout the country. Hitherto pun- 
ishment has been the only incentive to sobriety and industry 
furnished these people by American law. They were kept too 
low to feel disgrace, and reward was inconsistent with the theory 
of ' service owed.' Let us try now the persuasive power of wages 
and protection. If colored suifrage is still considered an experi- 
ment, this District is a good place in which to try it. The same 
objections do not exist here that are urged on behalf of some of 
the States. No constitutional question intervenes. Here, at 
least. Congress is supreme. The law can be passed, and if it is 
found to be bad, a majority can repeal it. The colored race is too 
small in numbers here to endanger the supremacy of the white 
people, but large and loyal enough to counteract to some extent 
disloyal proclivities. 

"Both the precept and practice of our fathers refute the alle- 
gation that this is exclusively a Avhite man's government. If we 
can not now consent to so slight a recognition, as proposed by 
this bill, of the great underlying theory of our Government, as 
declared and practiced by our fathers, we are thrown back upon 
that new and monstrous doctrine, that the five millions of our 
colored population, and their posterity forever, have no rights 
that a white man is bound to respect. 

" Who pronounces this crushing sentence ? The political 
South. And what is this South? The Southern master and his 
Northern minion. Have these people wronged the South? 
Have they filled it with violence, outrage, and murder ? No, sir ; 
they are remarkably gentle, patient, and respectful. Have they 
despoiled its w'calth or diminished its grandeur? No, sir; their 
unpaid toil has made the material South. They removed the 
forests, cleared the fields, built the dwellings, churches, colleges, 
cities, highways, railroads, and canals. Why, then, does the 
South hate and persecute these people? Because it has wronged 
them. Injustice always hates its victim. They are forced to 
look to the North for justice. And what is the North? Not the 
latitude of frosts ; not New England and the States that border 
on the lakes, the Mississippi, and the Pacific. • The geographical 
is lost in the political meaning of the word. The North, in a 
political sense, means justice, liberty, and union, and in the order 
in which I have named them. Jefferson defined this ^ North' 



58 THE THIBTY-JflJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

wheu he wrote 'all men are created- equal, endowed, by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are -life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This North has no geo- 
graphical boundaries. It embraces the friends of freedom in 
eveiy quarter of this great republic. Many of its bravest cham- 
pions hail from the geographical South. The North, that did 
not fear the slave power in its prime, in the day of its political 
strength and patronage, when it commanded alike the nation and 
the mob, and ^or the same cruel purpose, will not be intimidated 
by its expiring maledictions around this capital. The North 
must pass this bill to vindicate its sincerity and its courage. The 
slave power has already learned that the North is terrible in war, 
and forgiving and gentle in peace ; let its crushed and mangled 
victims learn from the passage of this bill, that the justice of the 
North, unlimited by lines of latitude, unlimited by color or race, 
slumbcrcth not." 

Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, followed : " In preparing to be- 
gin the w^ork of reconstructing the grandest of human govern- 
ments, shattered for a time by treason, and in endeavoring to 
ascertain what Ave should do, and how and when it should be 
done, 1 have consulted no pojiular impulse. Groping my way 
through the murky political atmosphere that has prevailed for 
more than thirty years, I have seated myself at the feet of the 
fathers of our country, that I might, as far as my suggestions 
would go, make them in accordance wdth the principles of those 
who constructed our Government. I can make no suggestion for 
the improvement of the j)rimary principles or general structure of 
our Government, and I would heal its wounds so carefully that it 
should descend to posterity unstained and unmarred as it came, 
under the guidance of Providence, from the hands of those who 
fashioned it. 

"For whom do we ask this legislation? In 1860, according 
to the census, there were fourteen thousand three hundred and 
sixteen colored people in this District, and we ask this legislation 
for the male adults of that number. Are they in rags and filth 
and degradation? The tax-books of the District will tell you 
that they pay taxes on $1,250,000 worth of real estate, held 
within the limits of this District. On one block, on which tliey 
pay taxes on fifty odd thousand dollars, there are but two colored 
freeholders who have not bought themselves out of slavery. 




/k.j^. 




H Q Tsr . "WILLIAM D . KE LLE \ 
■EPPESENTAXrVE FP.OM FEiTNSTL'VAKIA 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 59 

One of tlicm has bought as many as eight persons beside him- 
self— a wife and seven children. Coming to freedom in man- 
hood, mortgaged for a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars as his 
own price, he has earned and carried to the Southern robber 
thousands of dollars, the price extorted for his Avife and diildrcn, 
and is now a freeholder in this District. They have twenty-one 
churches, which they own, and which they maintain at an an- 
nual cost of over twenty thousand dollars. Their communing 
members number over forty-three hundred. In their twenty- 
two Sunday-schools they gather on each Sabbath over three thou- 
sand American children of African descent. They maintain, sir, 
to the infamous disgrace of the American Congress and people, 
thirty-three day schools, eight of which are maintained exclu- 
sively by contributions from colored citizens of the District; the 
remainder by their contributions, eked out by contributions from 
the generous people of the North ; and every dollar of their 
million and a quarter dollars of real estate and personal property 
is taxed for schools to educate the children of the white people 
of the District, the fathers of many of those children having been 
absent during the war fighting for the Confederacy and against 
our constitutional flag. Who shall reproach them with being 
poor and ignorant while Congress, Avhich has exclusive jurisdic- 
tion over the District, has, till last year, robbed them day by day, 
and barred the door of the public school against them? Such 
reproach does not lie in the white man's mouth ; at any rate, no 
member of the Democratic party ought to utter it." 

The debate was continued on the day following. Mr. Rogers, 
of New Jersey, having obtained the floor, addressed tlie House 
for two hours. He said : " I hold that there never has been, in 
the legislation of the United States, a bill which involved so 
momentous consequences as that now under consideration, because 
nowhere in the history of this country, from the time that the 
first reins of party strife were drawn over the land, was any po- 
litical party ever known to advocate the doctrine now advocated 
by a portion of the party on the other side of this House,' except 
within the last year, and during the heat and strife of battle in 
. the land. The wisdom of ages for more than five thousand years, 
and the most enlightened governments that ever existed upon the 
face of the earth, have handed down to us that grand principle 
that all governments of a civilized character have been and were 



GO THE THIRTY-MIJfTH COJVGEJESS. 

intended especially for the benefit of white men and white women, 
and not for those who belong to the negro, Indian, or mulatto race. 

" It is the high prerogative which the political system of this 
country has given to the masses, rich and poor, to exercise the 
right of suffrage and declare, according to the honest convictions 
of their hearts, who shall be the officers to rule over them. 
There is no privilege so high, there is no right so grand. It 
lies at the very foundation of this Government; and when you 
introduce into the social system of this country the right of the 
African race to compete at the ballot-box with the intelligent 
Avhite citizens of this country, you are disturbing and embitter- 
ing the whole social system ; you rend the bonds of a common 
political faith ; you break up commercial intercourse and the free 
interchanges of trade, and you degrade the people of this country 
before the eyes of the envious monarchs of Europe, and fill our 
history with a record of degradation and shame. 

" Why, then, should we attempt at this time to inflict the sys- 
tem of negro suffrage upon those who happen to be so unfortunate 
as to reside iu the District of Columbia? This city bears the 
name of George "Washington, the father of our country ; and as 
it was founded by him, so I wish to hand it down to those who 
shall come after us, preserving that principle which declares that 
the sovereignty is in the white people of the country, for whose 
benefit this Government was established. I am not ready to 
believe that those men who have laid down their lives in the 
battles of the late revolution, who came from their homes like 
the torrents that sweep over their native hills and mountains, 
those men who gathered round the sacred precincts of the tomb 
of Washington to uphold and perpetuate our proud heritage of 
liberty, intended to inflict upon the people of this District, or of 
this land, the monstrous doctrine of political equality of the negro 
race with the white at the ballot-box. 

" No such dogma as this was ever announced by the Republican 
party in their platforms. When that party met at Chicago, iu 
1860, tliey took pains to enunciate the great principle of self-gov- 
ernment which underlies the institutions of this country, that each 
State has the right to control its own domestic policy according 
to its own judgment exclusively. I ask the gentlemen on the 
other side of the house to allow the people of the District of 
Columbia to exercise the same great riciht of self-government, to 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 61 

determine by their votes at the ballot-box whether they desire to 
inaugurate a system of political equality with the colored people 
of the District. 

" Self-government was the great principle which impelled our 
fathers to protest against the powers of King George. That was 
the principle which led the brave army of George "Washington 
across the ice of the river Delaware. It was the principle which 
struck a successful blow against despotism, and planted liberty 
upon this continent. It was the principle that our fathers claimed 
the Parliament of England had no right to invade, and drove 
the colonies into rebellion, because laws w^ere passed without their 
consent by a Parliament in wdiich they were unrepresented. 

" I am here to-day to plead for the white people of this District, 
upon the same grounds taken by our fathers to the English Par- 
liament, in favor of self-government and the right of the people 
of the District to be heard upon this all-important question. Al- 
though we may have a legal yet we have no moral right, according 
to the immutable principles of justice, and according to the declara- 
tion of Holy Writ, that we should do unto others as we would 
they should do unto us, to inflict upon the people of this Dis- 
trict this fiendish doctrine of political equality with a race that 
God Almighty never intended should stand upon an equal footing 
with the wdiite man and woman in social or civil life." 

Mr. Farnsworth, of Illinois, replied : " He [Mr. Rogers] says 
this is a white man's Government. ' A white man's Government ! ' 
Why, sir, did not the Congress of the United States pass a law 
for enrolling into the service of the United States the black man 
as w^ell as the white man ? , Did not we tax the black man as 
well as the white man? Does he not contribute his money as 
well as his blood for the protection and defense of the Govern- 
ment? O, yes; and now, when the black man comes hobbling 
home upon his crutches and his wooden limbs, maimed for life, 
bleeding, crushed, wounded, is he to be told by the people who 
called him into the service of the Government, ' This is a w^hite 
man's Government; you have nothing to do with it?' Shame! 
I say, eternal shame upon such a doctrine, and upon the men who 
advocate it ! 

" What should be the test as to the right to exercise the elective 
franchise ? I contend that the only question to be asked should 
be, ' Is he a man? ' The test should be that of manhood, not that 



62 THE THIRTY-KIKTH CO:N'GIiESS. 

of color, or races, or class. Is lie endowed with conscience and 
reason? Is he an immortal being? If these questions are an- 
swered in the affirmative, he has the same right to protection that 
we all enjoy. 

"I am in favor, ]\Ir. Speaker^ of making suffrage equal and 
universal. I believe that greater wisdom is concentrated in the 
decisions of the ballot-box when all citizens of a certain age 
vote than when only a part vote. If you apply a test founded 
on education or intelligence, where will you stop ? One man will 
say that the voter should be able to read the Constitution and to 
write his name; another, that he should be acquainted with the 
history of the United States ; another w;ill demand a still higher 
degree of education and intelligence, until you will establish an 
aristocracy of wisdom, which is one of the worst kinds of aris- 
tocracy. Sir, the men who formed this Government, who believed 
in the rights of human nature, and designed the Government to 
protect them, believed, I think, as I do, that when suffrage is made 
universal, you concentrate in the ballot-box a larger amount of 
wisdom than when you exclude a portion of the citizens from the 
right of suffrage. 

" I grant, sir, that many of the colored men whom I would en- 
franchise are poor and ignorant, but we have made them so. We 
have oppressed them by our laws. We have stolen them from 
their cradles and consigned them to helpless slavery. The shackles 
are now knocked from their limbs, and they emerge from the house 
of bondage and stand forth as men. Let us now take the next 
grand step, a step which must commend itself to our judgment 
and consciences. Let us clothe these men with the rights of free- 
men, and give them the power to protect their rights. 

" Sir, as I have already remarked, we have passed through a 
fiery ordeal. There are but few homes within our land that are 
not made desolate by the loss of a son or a father. The widow 
and the orphan meet us wherever we turn. The maimed and 
crippled soldiers of the republic are every-where seen. ]\Iany 
fair fields have become cemeteries, wdiere molder the remains of 
the noble men who have laid down their lives in defense of our 
Government. We thought that we had attained the crisis of our 
troubles during the progress of the war. But it has been said that 
the ground-swell of the ocean after the storm is often more dan- 
gerous to the mariner than the tera2)est itself; and I am inclined to 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 63 

think that this is true in rcfcrcnoo to tlic present posture of our na- 
tional affairs. The storm has aj^parently sul)sic]c(l ; but, sir, if we fail 
to do our duty now as a nation — and tluit duty is so simple that a 
child can understand it ; no elaborate argument need enforce it, as 
no sophistry can conceal it; it is sim2)ly to give to one man the 
same rights that we give to another — if we fail now in this our 
plain duty as a nation, then the ship of state is in more peril from 
this ground-swell on which \\c arc riding than it was during the 
fierce tempest of war. I trust that this Congress will have the 
firmness and wisdom to guide the old ship safely into the haven 
of j)cace and secnrity. This we can do by fixing our eyes upon 
the guiding star of our fathers — the equal rights of all men." 

The discussion was resumed on the following day, January 12, 
by Mr. Davis, of New York : " Republican government can never 
rest safely, it can never rest peacefully, upon any foundation save 
that of the intelligence and virtue of its subjects. No govern- 
ment, republican in form, was ever prosperous where its people 
were ignorant and debased. And in this Government, where 
our fathers paid so much attention to intelligence, to the cultiva- 
tion of virtue, and to all considerations which should surround 
and guard the foundations of the republic, I am sure that we 
would do dishonor to their memory by conferring the franchise 
upon men unfitted to receive it and unworthy to exercise it. 

" I am ]3erfectly aware that in many States we have given the 
elective franchise to the white man who is debased and ignorant. 
I regret it, because I think that intelligence ought always, either 
as to the black or the white man, to be made a test of suffrage. 
And I glory in the principles that have been established by INIas- 
sachusetts, which prescribes, not that a man should have money 
in his purse, but that he should have in his head a cultivated 
brain, the ability to read the Constitution of his country, and 
intelligence to understand his rights as a citizen, 

"I have never been one of those who believed fliat the black 
man had 'no rights that the white man was bound to respect.' 
I believe that the black man in this country is entitled to citizen- 
ship, and, by virtue of that citizenship, is entitled to protection, 
to the full power of this Government, wherever he may be found 
on the face of God's earth ; that he has a right to demand that 
the shield of this Government shall be held over him, and that 
its powers shall be exerted on his behalf to the same extent as 



64 THE THIETY-JflMTH COJYGRESS. 

if he were the proudest grandee of the land. But, sir, citizen- 
ship is one thing, and the right of suffrage is another and a 
different thing; and in circumstances such as exist around us, I 
am unwilling that general, universal, unrestricted suffrage should 
be granted to the black men of this District, as is proj)osed by 
the bill under consideration. 

"This whole subject is within the power of Congress, and if 
we grant restricted privilege to-day, we can extend the exercise 
of that jjrivilege to-morrow. Public sentiment on this, as on a 
great many subjects, is a matter of slow growth and develop- 
ment. That is the history of the world. Development upon all 
great subjects is slow. The development of the globe itself has 
required countless ages before it was prepared for the introduc- 
tion of man upon it. And take the progress of the human race 
through the historic age — kingdoms and empires, systems of 
social polity, systems of religion, systems of science, have been 
of no rapid growth, but long centuries intervened between their 
origin and their overthrow. 

" The Creator placed man on earth, not for the perfection of 
the individual, but the race; and therefore he locked up the 
mysteries of his power in the bosom of the earth and in the 
depths of the heavens, rendering them invisible to mankind. 
He made man study those secrets, those mysteries, in order that 
his genius might be cultivated, his views enlarged, his intellect 
matured, so that he might gradually rise in the scale of being, 
and finally attain the full perfection for which his Creator de- 
signed him. 

" Thus governments, political systems, and political rights have 
been the subjects of study and improvement; changes adapted 
to the advance of society are made ; experiments are tried, based 
upon reason and upon judgment, and those are safest which in 
their gradual introduction avoid unnecessary violence and con- 
vulsion. 

" I submit, sir, whether it be wise for us now so suddenly to 
alter so entirely the political status of so great a number of the 
citizens of this District, in conferring upon them indiscriminately 
the right of franchise." 

Mr. Chanler, of New York, then addressed the House : 

" If, sir, it should ever be your good fortune to visit romantic 
old Spain, and to enter the fortress and palace of Alhambra, the 



. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Go 

fairest monument of Moorish grandeur and skill, as this Cai)itol 
is the pride of American architecture, you may see cut in stone 
a hand holding a key, surmounting the horse-shoe arch of the 
main gateway. They are the three tyjies of strength, speed, and 
secresy, the boast of a now fallen Saracen race, sous of that sea 
of sand, the desert, who carried the glory of Islam to furthest 
Gades. In an evil hour of civil strife and bitter hatred of fac- 
tion, the Alhambra was betrayed to Spain, ' to feed fat an ancient 
grudge' between political chiefs. The stronghold of the race, 
with the palace, the sacred courts of justice, and all the rare 
works of art — the gardens of unrivaled splendor — all that was 
their own of majesty, strength, and beauty, became the trophies 
of another. 

" The legend of the Saracen exile tells the story of penitence 
and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in 
the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous 
Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, 
who crossed the ocean to establish the glory of civil and religious 
liberty, and secure freedom to themselves and their posterity. 
To-day we are assembled in the Alhambra of America ; here is 
our citadel; here our courts of highest resort; around these halls 
cluster the proudest associations of the American people; they 
seem almost sacred in their eyes. No hostile foot of foreign foe 
or domestic traitor has trodden them in triumph. Above it floats 
the flag, the emblem of our Union. That Union is the emblem 
of the triumphs of the white race. That race rules by the ballot. 
Shall we surrender the ballot, the emblem of our sovereignty; 
the flag, the emblem of our Union ; the Union, the emblem of 
our national glory, that they may become the badges of our 
weakness and the trophies of another race? Never, sir! never, 
never ! 

"Shall the white laborer bow his free, independent, and hon- 
ored brow to the level of the negro just set free from slavery, 
and, by yielding the entrance to this great citadel of our nation, 
surrender the mastery of his race over the Representatives of the 
peojjle, the Senate, and Supreme Court of this Union ? Then, 
sir, the white workingman's sovereignty would begin to cease to be. 

"Then the most democratic majesty of American liberty would 
be humbled in the little dust which was lately raised by a brief 
campaign of two hundred thousand negro troops, and even they 
5 



66 TEE THIRTY-J\''INTR COiN'GRESS. 

led by wliite officers, while millions of white soldiers held the 
field in victory by their own strength and valor. Deny it if ye 
dare ! Sir, I know that this is a white man's Government, and 
I believe the white workingman has the manhood which shall 
preserve it to his latest posterity, pure and strong, in 'justice 
tempered with mercy.' 

" There may be a legend hereafter telling of the exile of Rep- 
resentatives now ofi this floor, who, in the hour of party spite, 
betrayed the dominion of their race here, and the stronghold of 
their people's liberty, to a servile and foreign race." 

Near the close of Mr. Chanler's remarks, his time having been 
extended by courtesy of the House, a forensic passage at arms 
occurred between that gentleman and Mr. Bingham, of Ohio. 
Mr. Chanler had said : " I deny that any obligation rests against 
this Government to do any thing more for the negro than has 
already been done. * On what meats doth this Csesar feed that he 
has grown so great ? ' The white soldier did as much work as he, 
fought as well, died as bravely, suffered in hospitals and in the 
field as well as he. More than this, the white soldier fought to 
liberate the slave, and did do it. The white soldier did more : 
he fought to preserve institutions and rights endeared to him by 
every hallowed association; to overthrow the rebellion of his 
brother against their Commonwealth and glorious Union; to 
preserve the sovereignty of the people against the conspiracy of a 
slave aristocracy, if you will ; to maintain the fabric of the Gov- 
ernment built by their fathers for them and their race in every 
country of kindred men who, downtrodden and disenfranchised, 
look to this country as a sure refuge. The white soldier fought 
as a volunteer, as a responsible, free, and resolute citizen, know- 
ing for what he fought, and generously letting the slave share 
with him the honor, and bestowing on him more than his share 
of the profits of the white man's victory over his equal and the 
negro's master. 

" We are willing that the negro should have every protection 
which the law can throw around him, but there is a majesty which 
' hedges in a king.' That he ought not to have until he shows 
himself ' every inch a king.' 

" ' Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.' 
" ' Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness 
thrust upon them.' 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 67 

"We are ojiposcd to thrusting honor on the negro. He is to- 
day, as a race, as de^wndont on the power and skill of tlic white 
race for protection as when he was first brought from Africa. 
Not one act of theirs has proved the capacity of the black race 
for self-government. They have neither literature, arts, nor arms, 
as a race. They have never, during all the changes of dynasties 
or revolution of States, risen higher than to be the helpers of the 
contending parties. They have had the same opportunity as the 
Indian to secure their independence of the white race, but have 
never systematically even attempted it on this continent, although 
they have been educated with equal care, and in the same schools 
as the white man. Their race has been subject to the white man, 
and has submitted to the yoke." 

Mr. Bingham. — "I understood the gentleman to say, that the 
colored race had fliiled to strike for their rights during the late 
rebellion. I wish to remind the gentleman of the fact, which 
ought to bring a blush to the cheek of every American citizen, 
that at the beginning of this great struggle, a distinguished gen- 
eral, who, I have no doubt, received the political support of the 
gentleman himself for the Presidency, and who, then at the head 
of an American army within the^ Commonwealth of Virginia, 
issued his proclamation, as general in command of the army, 
notifying the insurgents in arms against the Constitution that, 
if their slaves rose in revolt for their liberty, he, Major-General 
McClellan, by the whole force of the army at his command, would 
crush them with an iron hand. Yet the gentleman gets up here 
to-day, after a record of that sort, to cast censure upon this people 
because they did not strike for their liberties against the com- 
bined armies of the republic and the armies of treason \" 

Mr. Chanler. — "My honorable friend from Ohio may have 
made a good point against General McClellan, but he has made 
none against me. I admit that they have made successful insur- 
rections, but my argument was not to the effect that the negro 
race was not capable of the bloodiest deeds. I avoided entering 
into that question. I asserted that they had made successful in- 
surrection ; that they had held the white race under their heel in 
Hayti and St. Domingo. I would only say, with regard to this 
question of race, that I assert there is no record of the black race 
having proved its capacity for self-government as a race; that 
they have never struck a blow for freedom, and maintained their 



68 THE THIRTT-JflJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

freedom and independence as individuals when free. I appeal to 
history, and to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Bingham], and I 
speak as a student of history, and the representative of a race 
whose proudest boast is that their capacity for self-govern- 
ment is the only charter of their liberty. I assail no race; I 
assail no man. I have taken the greatest pains to j^rove that the 
inalienable rights of the black man are as sacred to me as those 
inalienable rights I have received from my God. If the gentle- 
man misunderstood me, I hope he will accept this explanation. 
If I have not met his question, I will now yield the floor to him 
to continue." 

Mr. Bingham. — "And I continue thus far, that the gentle- 
man's speech certainly has relation to the rights of the black man 
within the Bepublic of the United States. What he may say of 
their history outside of the jurisdiction of this country, it is not 
very important for me to take notice of. But inasmuch as the 
gentleman has seen fit, in his response to what I said, to refer to 
the testimony of history, I will bear witness now, by the authority 
of history, that this very race of which he speaks is the only race 
now existing upon this planet that ever hewed their way out of 
the prison-house of chattel slavery to the sunlight of jDcrsonal 
liberty by their own unaided arm. So much for that part of the 
gentleman's argument as relates to history." 

Mr. Chanler. — "Does the gentleman allude now to what has 
been done in other lands than this ? I ask the question because he 
says he does not like me to go outside of the jurisdiction of this 
country, and I therefore ask him not to go too far into Africa." 

Mr. Bingham. — " I am not in Africa. I refer to what the gen- 
tleman referred to himself. The insurrection in St. Domingo, I 
say, stands without a parallel in the history of any race now liv- 
ing on this earth, and I challenge the gentleman to refute that 
statement from history." 

Mr. Chanler.—" That is admitted." 

Mr. Bingham. — "That is admitted. Then I want to know, 
with a fact like that conceded, what sort of logic, what sort of 
force, what sort of reason, what sort of justice is there in the 
remark of the gentleman made here in a deliberative assembly 
touching the question of the personal enfranchisement of the 
black race, when he says in the statement here, right in the face 
of that fact, that they only are entitled to their liberty who strike 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 69 

« 

the blow for and malntaiu their liberty? They did strike the 
blow in Ilayti, and did maintain their liberty there. They struck 
such a blow for liberty there as no other race of men under like 
circumstances ever before struck, now represented by any organ- 
ized conununity upon this planet ; and that the gentleman con- 
ceded. And yet this sort of argument is to be adduced here as 
reason why these people in the District of Columbia should not 
receive the consideration of this House, and be protected in their 
rights as men. If the gentleman's remark is not adduced for 
that purpose, then it is altogether foreign to our inquiry. If the 
gentleman can assign any other reason for the introduction of any 
such argument as that, I should like to hear him." 

Mr. Chanler. — '•' I merely wish to say, in reply to the gentle- 
man, that I have read history a little further back. I remember 
when the British fleet and the British army held out a similar 
threat to the white race of this country. The proclamation of 
General McCleHan did keep down the negroes; and this fact 
proves what I assert — that they are a race to be kept under. No 
racfe capable of achieving its liberty by its own efforts, would have 
listened for one moment to the paper threats of all the generals 
in the world. The negroes listened to McClellan, and they 
shrank behind the bush. They are bushmen in Africa. They are 
a dependent race, unwilling — I assert it from the record of his- 
tory — unwilling to assert their independence at the risk of their 
lives. By their own efforts they never have attained, and I 
firmly believe they never will attain, their liberty." 

Mr. Bingham replied : " I desire to say to the gentleman from 
New York, when he talks of being a ' student of history,' that 
before the tribunal of history the facts are not against me nor 
against the colored race. I beg leave to say to the gentleman 
that these people have borne themselves as bravely, as well, and, 
I may add, as wisely during the great contest just closed, as any 
people to whom he can point, situated in like circumstances, at 
any period of the world's history. They were in chains when 
the rebellion broke out. They constituted but one-sixth of the 
whole body of the people. By the terms of the Constitution of 
the United States, if they lifted a hand in the assertion of their 
right to freedom, they were liable that moment to be crushed by 
the combined power of the Eepublic, called out, in pursuance of 
the very letter of the Constitution, ^to suppress insurrection.' 



70 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH CONGRESS. 

• 

Yet, notwithstanding the fact that their whole living generation 
and the generations before them, running Ixick two centuries, had 
been enslaved and brutalized, reduced to the sad and miserable 
condition of chattels, which, for want of a better name, we call a 
' slave ' — an article of merchandise, a thing of trade, with no ac- 
knowledged rights in the jJresent, and denied even the hope of a 
heritage in the great hereafter — yet, sir, the moment that the 
word ' Liberty ' ran along your ranks, the moment that the word 
' Emancipation ' was emblazoned upon your banners, those men 
who, with their ancestors, had been enslaved through five gene- 
rations, rose as one man to stand by this republic, the last hope 
of oppressed humanity upon the earth, until they numbered one 
hundred and seventy-five thousand arrayed in arms under your 
banners, doing firmly, unshrinkingly, and defiantly their full 
share in securing the final victory of our arms. I have said this 
much in defense of men who had the manhood, in the hour of the 
nation's trial, to strike for the flag and the unit^ of the republic 
in the tempest of the great conflict, and to stand, where brave 
men only could stand, on the field of poised battle, where *the 
earthquake and the fire led the charge. Sir, I am not mistaken ; 
and the record of history to which I have referred does not, as 
the gentleman affirms it does, make against me." 

Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, in reply to Mr. Chanler, said: "He 
[Mr. Chanler] proceeds to say that they are now, as a class, de- 
pendent as when they were brought from their native wilds in 
Africa. Sir, I believe if the gentleman were master of all lan- 
guages, if he were to attempt to put into a sentence the quintes- 
sence, the high-wines, and sublimation of an untruth, he could 
not have more concentrated his language into a libel. 

" What is the fact, sir ? It is perfectly notorious that these four 
million slaves have not only taken care of themselves amid all the 
ingenious impediments which tyrants could impose, but they have 
borne upon their stalwart shoulders their masters, millions of 
people, for a century. Why, sir, it seemed as impossible for a 
man to swim the Atlantic with Mount Atlas upon his back, or 
make harmonious base to the thunders of heaven. But these men 
have achieved the world's wonder — coming out from the tortures 
of slavery, from the prison-house, untainted with dishonor or 
crime, and out of the war free, noble, brave, and more worthy of 
their friends, always true to the flag. 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 71 

" Mr. Speaker, it was in fable tliat a man pointed a lion to the 
picture which represented the Iving of the forest prostrate, with a 
man's foot on his neck, and asked what he thought of that. The 
rej^ly was, ' Lions have no painters.' For days the unblushing 
apostles of sham Democracy have in this House drawn pictures 
of the ignorance and degradation of the people of color in the 
District of Columbia. Had the subjects of their wanton defama- 
tion had a Representative here, there would have been a different 
coloring to the picture, and I would gladly leave their defense to 
the Representatives of classes who have by hundreds darkened 
these galleries with their sable countenances, waiting for days to 
hear the decisive vote which announces that their freedom is not 
a mockery. 

"Who are they to whom this bill proposes to give suffrage? 
They are twenty thousand people, owning twenty-one churches, 
maintaining thirty-three day schools, and paying taxes on more 
than one and a quarter million dollars' worth of real property. 
Thirty per cent, of their number were slaves ; but the census does 
not show that there is a Democratic congressional district in the 
Union where a larger proportion of its population are found at- 
tendant at the churches or in the schools. 

" They did not follow the example of their pale-faced neighbors, 
to the number of thousands, crossing the line to join in the rebell- 
ion ; but three thousand and more of their number went into the 
Union army, nearly one thousand of whom, as soldiers, fell by 
disease and battle in the room of those who wept on Northern soil 
for rebel defeats, and now decry the manhood and withhold just 
rights from our true national defenders. 

"In the South they were our friends. In the language of an 
official dispatch of Secretary Seward to Minister Adams, ' Every- 
where the American general receives his most useful and reliable 
information from the negro, who hails his coming as the harbinger 
of freedom.' Not one, but many, of our generals have proclaimed 
that the negro has gained by the bayonet the ballot. Admiral Du 
Pont made mention of the negro pilot Small, who brought out 
the steamer Planter, mounting a rifled and siege gun, from Char- 
leston, as a prize to us, under the very guns of the enemy. He 
brought us the first trophy from Fort Sumter, and information 
more valuable than the prize. 

" The celebrated charge of the negro brigade at the conflict at 



7B THE THIBTT-J^IJ^TH CONGRESS. 

Port Hudson has passed iuto history. The position of the colored 
people in the State of Iowa reflects lasting honor on their loyalty, 
and our brave white soldiers would not have me withhold the 
facts. In the State there were between nine hundred and a 
thousand people of their class subject to military duty. Of that 
number more than seven hundred entered the army. They put to 
blush the patriotism of the dominant race in all Democratic dis- 
tricts. Seven-tenths of a class, without the inducement of com- 
missions as lieutenants, captains, colonels, commissaries, or quar- 
termasters, braving the hate and vengeance of rebels, rushing into 
the deadly imminent breach in the darkest hour of our struggle ! 
Where is the parallel to this? They had no flag; it was a 
mockery. There was no pledge of political franchise. Does 
history cite us to a country where so large a per cent, of the pop- 
ulation went forth for the national defense ? It was not under the 
Caesars ; and Harold, in the defense of Britain, left behind him a 
larger per cent, of the stalwart and the strong. They were more 
eager to maintain the national honor than the zealots to rescue 
Jerusalem from the profanation of infidels. Not Frank or Hun, 
nor Huguenot or Roundhead, or mountaineer, Hungarian, or Pole, 
exceeded their sacrifices made when tardily accepted. And this is 
the race now asking our favor. 

" Mr. Speaker, it will be one of the most joyful occasions of my 
life to give expression to my gratitude by voting a ballot to those 
who owed us so little, yet have aided us so faithfully and well. 
My conscience approves it as a humane act to the millions who 
for centuries have groaned vinder a terrible realization that on 
the side of the oppressor there is power. 

"My purjiose is not to leave that heritage of shame to my 
children, that I forgot those whose blood fed our rivers and crim- 
soned the sea, and left them outcasts in the ' land of the free,' 
preferring white treason to sable loyalty. I rather vote death 
the penalty for the chief traitor, all honor and reward for our 
soldiery, and a ballot, safety, and justice for the poor." 

On the 15th of January the discussion was continued by Mr. 
Kasson, of Iowa, who said : " Much has been said in this debate 
about the gallantry of the negro troops, and about the number 
of negro troops in the war. Gentlemen have declared here so 
broadly that we were indebted to them for our victories as to ac- 
tually convey the impression that they won nearly all the victo- 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 73 

ries accomplisluHl by the armies of the United States, and that to 
them arc we indebted for the salvation of our country and our 
triumph over the rebellion. 

"I do not agree with them in the extent. of their praise, nor 
the grounds upon Avhich it has been placed. One gentleman, I 
think it was the gentleman from Pennsylvania, speaks of our debt 
to the negroes, because they have fought our battles for us. This 
is a falsification of the condition of the negroes, and of the history 
of the country in this particular. Those negroes fought for their 
Ubcrtij, which was involved in the preservation of the Union of 
the States. They fought with us to accomplish the maintenance 
of the integrity of the country, which carried with it the liberty 
of their own race ; and what would have been said of the negroes 
if they had not, under such circumstances, come forward and 
united with us? While I yield to the negro troops the credit of 
having exhibited bravery and manhood when put to the test, I 
do not yield to them the exclusive or chief credit of having won 
the victory for the Government of my country in preserving this 
Union. Let us not, under false assertions of fact, send out to 
the country and the world from this floor the declaration that the 
white race of this country are wanting in the gallantry, the de- 
votion, and the patriotism which ultimately secured for our armies 
triumph, and for our nation perpetuity. 

"Unless intelligence exists in this country, unless schools are 
supported and education diffused throughout the country, our in- 
stitutions are not safe, and either anarchy or despotism will be the 
result; and when you propose substantially to introduce at once 
three-quarters of a million or a million of voters, the great mass 
of whom are ignorant and unable to tell when the ballot they 
vote is right side up, then I protest against such an alarming in- 
fusion of ignorance into the ballot-box, into that sacred palladium, 
as we have always called it, of the liberties of our country. Let 
us introduce them by fit degrees. Let them come in as fast as 
they are fit, and their numbers will not shock the character of our 
institutions. 

"I turn for a single moment to call attention to the philan- 
thropy of the proposition. If you introduce all without regard 
to qualification, without their being able to read or write, and 
thus to understand the questions on which they are to decide, 
what would be the effect? You will take away from them tlie 



74 THE THIRTT-JflJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

strongest incentive to learn to read or write. As a race, it is not 
accustomed to position and property ; it has no homesteads, it has 
no stake in the country; and unless they are required to be intel- 
ligent, and qualified to understand something about our institu- 
tions and our laws, and the questions which are submitted to the 
people from time to time, you say then to them, 'No matter 
whether or not you make progress in civilization or education, 
you shall have all the rights of citizenship,' and in that way you 
take away from them all special motive to education and improve- 
ment. On the contrary, if the ability to read and write and un- 
derstand the ballot is made the qualification on the part of these 
people to exercise the right of voting, the remaining portion will 
see that color is not exclusion. They would all aspire to the 
qualification itself as preliminary to the act. You can submit no 
motive to that race so powerful for the purpose of developing in 
them the education and intelligence required. 

" I say, therefore, on whatever grounds you put it, whether you 
regard the safety of our institutions or the light of philanthropy, 
you should insist on qualifications substantially the same as those 
required in the State of Massachusetts. And let me say that,, 
taking the State of Massachusetts as an example of the result of 
general intelligence and qualified suffrage, and a careful guardian- 
ship of the ballot-box, I know of no more illustrious example in 
this or any other country of its importance. 

"With a credit that surpasses that of the United States, with 
a history that is surpassed by no State in the Union, with wealth 
that is almost fabulous in proportion to its population, with a 
prosperity almost unknown in the history of the world, that State 
stands before us to-day in all her dignity, strength, wealth, intel- 
ligence, and virtue. And if we, by adopting similar principles in 
other States, can secure such results, we certainly have an induce- 
ment to consider well how far this condition is to be attributed to 
her diffused education, and to the provisions of her constitution." 

At the close of Mr. Kasson's speech, a colloquy occurred be- 
tween him and his colleague, Mr. Price, eliciting the fact that the 
question of negro suffrage in Iowa had been squarely before the 
people of that State in the late fall election, and their vote had 
been in favor of the measure by a majority of sixteen thousand. 

Mr. Julian, of Indiana, having obtained the floor near the hour 
of adjournment, made his argument on the following day, when 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 75 

the consideration of the qncstion was resnmccl. In answer to the 
objection that ne<^ro voting wonhl " k-ad to the amalgamation of 
the races or social equality," he said: "On this subject there is 
nothing left to conjecture, and no ground for alarm. Negro suf- 
frage has been very extensively tried in this country, and we are 
able to appeal to facts. Negroes had the right to vote in all the 
Colonies save one, under the Articles of Confederation. They 
voted, I believe, generally, on the question of adopting the Con- 
stitution of the United States. They have voted ever since in 
New York and the New England States, save Connecticut, in 
which the practice was discontinued in 1818. They voted in 
New Jersey till the year 1840; in Virginia and Maryland till 
1833; in Pennsylvania till 1838; in Delaware till 1831; and in 
North Carolina and Tennessee till 1836. I have never under- 
stood that in all this experience of negro suffrage the amalgama- 
tion of the races was the result. I think these evils are not at all 
complained of to this day in New England and New York, where 
negro suffra'^e is still practiced and recognized by law." 

In answer to the argument that a " war of races " might en- 
sue, ]\Ir. Julian said : " Sir, a war of races in this country can 
only be the result .of denying to the negro his rights, just as such 
wars have been caused elsewhere ; and the late troubles in Jamaica 
should teach us, if any lesson can, the duty of dealing justly with 
our millions of freedmen. Like causes must produce like results. 
English law made the slaves of Jamaica free, but England failed 
to enact other laws making their freedom a blessing. The old 
spirit of domination never died in the slave-master, but was only 
maddened by emancipation. For thirty years no measures were 
adopted tending to protect or educate the freedmen. At length, 
and quite recently, the colonial authorities passed a whipping act, 
then a law of eviction for people of color, then a law imposing 
heavy impost duties, bearing most grievously upon them, and 
finally a law providing for the importation of coolies, thus taxing 
the freedmen for the very purpose of taking the bread out of the 
mouths of their own children ! I believe it turns out, after all, 
that these outraged people even then did not rise up against the 
local government ; but the white ruffians of the island, goaded on 
by their own unchecked rapacity, and availing themselves of the 
infernal pretext of a black insurrection, perpetrated deeds of 
rapine and vengeance that find no parallel anywhere, save in the 



76 THE THIRTY-JflJ^'TH COJ^GRESS. 

acts of their natural allies, the late slave-breeding rebels, against 
our flag. Sir, is there no warning here against the policy of 
leaving our freedmen to the tender mercies of their old masters? 
Are the Avhite rebels of this District any better than the Jamaica 
villains to whom I have referred? The late rej^ort of General 
Schurz gives evidence of some important facts which will doubt- 
less apply here. The mass of the white people in the South, he 
says, are totally destitute of any national feeling. The same big- 
oted sectionalism that swayed them prior to the war is almost 
universal. Nor have they any feeling of the enormity of treason 
as a crime. To them it is not odious, as very naturally it would 
not be, under the policy which foregoes the punishment of traitors, 
and gives so many of them the chief places of power in the South. 
And their hatred of the negro to-day is as intense and scathing and 
as universal as before the war. I believe it to be even more so. 
The proposition to educate him and elevate his condition is every- 
where met with contempt and scorn. They acknowledge that 
slavery, as it once existed, is overthrown ; but the continued in- 
feriority and subordination of the colored race, under some form 
of vassalage or serfdom, is regarded by them as certain. Sir, they 
have no thought of any thing else ; and if the ballot shall be with- 
held from the freedmen after the withdrawal of military power, 
the most revolting forms of oppression and outrage will be prac- 
ticed, resulting, at last, in that very war of races which is foolishly 
apprehended as the effect of giving the negro his rights." 

A serious question confronted Mr. Julian, namely : How could 
Representatives from States which negroes by constitutional pro- 
vision are forbidden to enter, be expected to vote for negro suffrage 
in this District ? He said : " In seeking to meet this difficulty, 
several considerations must be borne in mind. In the first place, 
the demand for negro suffrage in this District rests not alone upon 
the general ground of right, of democratic equality, but upon pe- 
culiar reasons superinduced by the late war, which make it an 
immediate practical issue, involving not merely the welfare of the 
colored man, but the safety of society itself. If civil government 
is to be revived at all in the South, it is perfectly self-evident that 
the loyal men there must vote ; but the loyal men are the negroes, 
and the disloyal are the whites. To i)ut back the governing power 
into the hands of the very men who brought on the war, and ex- 
clude those who have proved themselves the true friends of the 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 77 

country, would be utterly suicitlal and atrociously unjust. Negro 
suffrage in the districts lately in revolt is thus a present political 
necessity, dictated by the selfishness of the white loyalist as well 
as his sense of justice. But in our Western States, in which the 
negro population is relatively small, and the prevailing sentiment 
of their white people is loyal, no such emergency exists. Society 
will not be endangered by the temporary postponement of the 
right of negro suffrage till public opinion shall render it prac- 
ticable, and leaving the question of suffrage in the loyal States to 
be decided by them on its merits. If Indiana had gone out of her 
proper place in the Union, and her loyal population had been found 
too weak to force her back into it without negro bullets and bay- 
onets, and if, after thus coercing her again into her constitutional 
orbit, her loyalists had been found unable to hold her there with- 
out negro ballots, the question of negro suffi'age in Indiana would 
most obviously have been very different from the comparatively 
abstract one which it now is. It would, it is true, have involved 
the question of justice to the negroes of Indiana, but the tran- 
scendently broader and more vital question of national salvation 
also. Let me add further, that should Congress pass this bill, 
and should the ballot be given to the negroes in the sunny South 
generally, those in our Northern and Western States, many of them 
at least, may return to their native land and its kindlier skies, and 
thus quiet the nerves of conservative gentlemen who dread too 
close a proximity to those whose skins, owing to some providential 
oversight, were somehow or other not stamped with the true 
orthodox luster. 

"The ballot should be given to the negroes as a matter of 
justice to them. It should likewise be done as a matter of retrib- 
utive justice to the slaveholders and rebels. According to the 
best information I can obtain, a very large majority of the white 
people of this District have been rebels in heart during the war, 
and are rebels in heart still. That contempt for the negro and 
scorn of free industry, which constituted the mainspring of the 
rebellion, cropped out here during the war in every form that 
was possible, under the immediate shadow of the central Govern- 
ment. INIeaner rebels than many in this District could scarcely 
have been found in the whole land. They have not been pun- 
ished. The halter has been cheated out of their necks. I am 
very sorry to say that under what seems to be a false mercy, a 



78 THE THIRTY-KIKTR COJfGBESS. 

misapplied Immanity, the guiltiest rebels of the war have thus 
far been allowed to escape justice. I have no desire to censure 
the authorities of the Government for this fact. I hope they 
have some valid excuse for their action. This question of pun- 
ishment I know is a difficult one. The work of iJunishment is 
so vast that it naturally palsies the will to enter upon it. It 
never can be thoroughly done on this side of the grave. And 
were it j^racticable to punish adequately all the most active and 
guilty rebels, justice would still remain unsatisfied. Far guiltier 
men than they are the rebel sympathizers of the loyal States, who 
coolly stood by and encouraged their friends in the South in their 
work of national rapine and murder, and while they were ever 
ready to go joyfully into the service of the devil, were too cow- 
ardly to wear his uniform and carry his weapons in open day. 
But Congress in this District has the power to punisk by ballot, 
and there will be a beautiful, poetic justice in the exercise of this 
power. Sir, let it be applied. The rebels here will recoil from 
it with horror. Some of the worst of them, sooner than submit 
to black suffrage, will doubtless leave the District, and thus render 
it an unspeakable service. To be voted down and governed by 
Yankee and negro ballots will seem to them an intolerable griev- 
ance, and this is among the excellent reasons why I am in favor 
of it. If neither hanging nor exile can be extemporized for the 
entertainment of our d6mestic rebels, let us require them at least 
to make their bed on negro ballots during the remainder of their 
unworthy lives. Of course they will not relish it, but that will 
be their own peculiar concern. Their darling institution must 
be charged with all the consequences of the war. They sowed 
the wind, and, if required, must reap the whirlwind. Retribu- 
tion follows wrong-doing, and this law must work out its results. 
Rebels and their sympathizers, I am sure, will fare as well under 
negro suffrage as they deserve, and I desire to leave them, as far 
as practicable, in the hands of their colored brethren. IS^or shall 
I stop to inquire very critically whether the negroes avejit to vote. 
As between themselves and white rebels, who deserve to be hung, 
they are eminently fit. I would not have them more so. Will 
you, Mr. Speaker, will even my conservative and Democratic 
friends, be particularly nice or fastidious in the choice of a man 
to vote down a rebel? Shall we insist uj)on a perfectly finished 
gentleman and scholar to vote down the traitors and white trash 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 79 

of this District, who have recently signalized themselves by mob- 
bing unollending negroes ? Sir, almost any body, it seems to me, 
will answer the purpose. I do not pretend that the colored men 
here, shonld they get the ballot, will not sometimes abuse it. 
They will undoubtedly make mistakes. In some cases they may 
even vote on the side of their old masters. But I feel pretty safe 
in saying that even white men, perfectly free from all suspicion 
of negro blood, have sometimes voted on the wrong side. Sir, I 
appeal to gentlemen on this floor, and especially to my Demo- 
cratic frienc^s, to say whether they can not call to mind instances 
in which white men have voted wrong ? Indeed, it rather strikes 
me that white voting, ignorant, depraved, party -ridden, Democratic 
white voting, had a good deal to do in hatching into life the re- 
bellion itself, and that no results of negro voting are likely to be 
much worse." 

After an hour occupied by ]Mr. Randall and ]Mr. Kelley, both 
of Pennsylvania, in a colloquial discussion of the history and 
present position of their State upon the subject of negro suffrage, 
Mr. Thomas, "of Maryland, addressed the House. After setting 
forth the injustice the passage of the bill would work toward the 
people of his State, he said: 

"If I believed that the matter of suifrage was the only mode 
to help the negro in his elevation, and the only safeguard to his 
protection, or guarantee to his rights, I would be willing to give 
it to him now, subject to proper qualifications and restrictions. 
But I am honest in my conviction that, uneducated and ignorant 
as he is, a slave from his birth, and subject to the will and caprice 
of his master, with none of the exalted ideas of what that privi- 
lege means, and with but a faint conception of the true position 
he now occupies, the negro is not the proper subject to have con- 
ferred upon him this right. I believe if it is given to him, that 
in localities where his is the majority vote, parties will spring up, 
each one bidding higher than the other for his ballot, and that 
in the end the negro-voting element will be controlled by a few 
evil and wicked politicians, and as something to be bought and 
sold as freely as an article of merchandise. I am satisfied of 
another fact, from my experience of the Southern negro, that if 
they are ever allowed to vote, the shrewd politician of the South, 
who has been formerly his master, will exert more influence over 
his vote than all the exhortations from Beecher or Cheever. 



80 THE THIRTT-JflJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

"It is a notorious fact that the Southern planter maintained 
his political influence over the poor white man of the South, 
because the jioor white man was dependent on him for his living 
and support. And you will find, when it is too late, that the 
Southern planter will maintain the same political influence over 
the poor, uneducated, ignorant, and dependent African, even to 
a greater extent than he formerly exercised over what used to be 
called the 'poor white trash.' 

"Mr. Speaker, let us not, because we have the majority here 
to-day, pass upon measures which, if we were eve»ly divided, 
we would hesitate to pass. Let us not, because we are called 
radicals, strike at the roots of society, and of the great social 
"and political systems that have existed for over a century, and 
attempt to do in a day, without any preparation, what, to do well 
and safely, will require years of patience on the part of the freed- 
men, and earnest, honest exertions to elevate, improve, and edu- 
cate on our part. Let us look at this question as statesmen, not 
as partisans. Let us not suppose that the parties of to-day will 
have a perpetual existence, and that because the negro, freed and 
emancipated by us, would naturally vote on the side of his deliv- 
erer to-day, that it is any guarantee, when new parties are formed 
and a competition arises, that the whole or the major part of his 
vote will be cast on the right side. White men and black men 
are liable to the same infirmities. 

"Let us rather, sir, rejoice at what has been already done for 
him, and be content to watch his future. Let us help to elevate 
and improve him, not only in education, but in morals. Let us 
see to it that he is not only protected in all his rights of person 
and of property, but let us insist that the amplest guarantees 
shall be given. Let us wait until the great problem the African 
is now working out has been finished, and we find that he thor- 
oughly comprehends and will not abuse what he has got, before 
we attempt to confer other privileges, which, when once granted, 
can never be taken from him. Sir, let it not be forgotten that 
'revolutions never go backward;' and if you ever confer this 
right on the negro, and find it will not work well, that you have 
been too hasty, that you should have waited awhile longer, you 
will find it is too late, and that, once having possessed it, they 
will not part with it except with their lives." 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 81 

On the 17th of January tlio debate was resumed by Mr. Bar- 
ling, of New York, who remarked : 

"What public necessity exists for the passage of this bill at 
this time? There are no benefits which the colored people of 
this District could attain bv the exercise of the ri<i'ht of sufFrag-e 
that Congress could not bestow. Our right and power to legis- 
late for this District arc unquestioned, and instead of wasting 
days and weeks over a question which is exciting bitter feeling 
among our own people, had we not better give our attention 
to matters of great national interest which so urgently demand 
speedy action on our part? Let us pass laws for the education 
of the people of this District, and fit them ultimately to receive 
the elective franchise; or, if any thing is required to satisfy the 
intense desire, manifested by some gentlemen of this House, to 
bestow the franchise on those not now possessed of it, give it to 
every soldier who served in the Union Army and was honorably 
discharged, whether old or young, rich or poor, native or foreign- 
born, white or black, and show to the world that the American 
peojile, recognizing the services and sufferings of their brave 
defenders, give them, as a recognition, the highest and best gift 
of American citizenship. 

"If I know myself, I know that no unjust or unmanly preju- 
dice M'arps my judgment or controls my action on any matter 
of legislation affecting the colored race on this continent. I 
believe in their equality of rights before the law with the domi- 
nant race. I believe in their rights of life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness. And yet I believe that, before we confer upon 
them the political right of suffrage, as contemplated by the bill 
now nnder consideration, we should seek to elevate their social 
condition, and lift them up from the depths of degradation and 
ignorance in which many of them are left by the receding waves 
of the sea of rebellion. There are many strong objections to 
conferring upon the colored men of this District the gift of un- 
qualified suffrage without any qualification based on intelligence. 
The large preponderance which they possess numerically will 
inevitably lead to mischievous results. Neither would I entirely 
disregard the views of the people of this District, many of whom 
I know to be sound, loyal Union men. 

"But I do not wish to see the Union party take any step in 
this direction from which they may desire hereafter to recede. 
6 



S2 TEE THIRTY-MIMTH COJVGRFSS. 

Let us first rather seek to enlighten this people, and educate them 
to know the value of the great gift of liberty which has been 
bestowed upon them; teach them to know that to labor is for 
their best interests; teach them to learn and lead virtuous and 
industrious liv^es, in order to make themselves respected, and 
encourage them to act as becomes freemen. Then they will vote 
intelligently, and not be subject to the control of designing men, 
who would seek to use them for the attainment of their own 
selfish ends. 

"Now, INIr. Speaker, in conclusion I desire to say that, as no 
election will take place in this District until next June, there can 
be no reason for sjjecial haste in the passage of this bill, and that 
there is a proposition before this House, which seems to be received 
with very general favor, to create a commission for the govern- 
ment of this city ; and, in order to give an opportunity to mature 
a bill for that purpose, and have it presented for the considera- 
tion of this House, I move the postponement of the pending bill 
until the first Tuesday in April next." 

At a previous stage of the discussion of this measure, Mr. Hale 
had proposed amendments to the bill. These amendments were 
now the subject under discussion. They were in the following 
words : 

"Amend the motion to recommit by adding to that motion an instruction 
to the committee to amend the bill so as to extend the right of suffrage in the 
District of Columbia to all persons coming within either of the following 
classes, irrespective of caste or color, but subject only to existing provisions 
and qualifications other than those founded on caste or color, to wit : 

"1. Those who can read the Constitution of the United States. 

"2. Those who are assessed for and pay taxes on real or personal property 
within the District. 

"3. Those who have served in and been honorably discharged from the 
military or naval service of the United States. 

"And to restrict such right of suffrage to the classes above named, and to 
include proper provisions excluding from the right of suffrage those who 
have borne arms against the United States during the late rebellion, or given 
aid and comfort to said rebellion." 

At the close of INIr. Darling's remarks, in which he had moved 
to postpone the whole subject, Mr. Hale, of New York, having 
argued at considerable length in favor of the several clauses of 
his proposed amendment, remarked: "Of the details of my 
amendment I am by no means tenacious. I do not expect to 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 83 

bring every member of the House, or even every member on this 
side of the House, to concur in all my own views. I desire sim- 
ply to put my measures fairly before the House, and to advocate 
them as I best can. I am ready and willing to yield my own 
preferences in matters of detail to their better judgment. More 
than that, I shall not follow the example that has been set by 
some on this side of the House who oj)pose my amendment, and 
who claim to be the peculiar friends of negro suffrage, by pro- 
claiming that I w'ill adhere to the doctrine of qualified suffrage, 
and will join our political enemies, the Democrats, in voting down 
every thing else. No, sir ; for one, and I say it with entire frank- 
ness, I prefer a restricted and qualified suffrage substantially upon 
the basis that I have proposed. If the voice of this House be 
otherwise — if the sentiment of this Congress be that it is more 
desirable that universal suffrage should be extended to all within 
this District, then, for one, I say most decidedly I am for it rather 
than to leave the matter in its present condition, or to disfranchise 
the black race in this District." 

Mr. Thayer, of Pennsylvania, spoke as follows : " The propo- 
sition contained in this bill is a new proposition. It contemplates 
a change which will be a landmark in the history of this coun- 
try — a landmark which, if it is set up, will be regarded by the 
present and future generations of men who are to inhabit this 
continent with pride and satisfaction, or deplored as one of the 
gravest errors in the history of legislation. The bill, if it shall 
become a law, will be, like the law to amend the Constitution by 
abolishing slavery, the deep foot-print of an advancing civiliza- 
tion, or the conspicuous monument of an unwise and pernicious 
experiment. 

" Much has been said, on the part of those who oppose the bill, 
on the subject of its injustice to the white inhabitants of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. Indeed, the argument on that side of the 
question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, 
and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. 
Abstract this from the excited declamation to which you have 
listened, and what is left is but the old revolting argument in 
favor of slavery, and a selfish appeal to prejudice and ignorance. 
It is insisted that a majority of the white voters of the District 
are opposed to the contemplated law, that they have recently 
given a public expression of their opinion against it, and that for 



84 THE TBIRTY-KIXTH COKGBESS. 

that reason it would be unjust and oppressive in Congress to pass 
this law. In my judgment, this is a question not concerning alone 
the wishes and prejudices of the seven thousand voters who dwell 
in this District, but involving, it may be, the honor, the justice, 
the good faith, and the magnanimity of the great nation which 
makes this little spot the central seat of its empire and its power. 

"If it concerns the honor of the United States that a certain 
class of its people, in a portion of its territory subject to its ex- 
clusive jurisdiction and control, shall, in consideration of the 
change which has taken place in its condition, and of the fidelity 
which it has exhibited in the midst of great and severe trials, be 
elevated somewhat above the political degradation which has 
hitherto been its lot, shall the United States be prevented from 
the accomplishment of that great and generous purpose by the 
handful of voters who temporarily encamp under the shadow of 
the Capitol ? It may be that the determination of a question of 
so much importance as this belongs rather to the people of the 
United States, through their Representatives in Congress assem- 
bled, than to the present qualified voters of this District. Sir, 
the field of inquiry is much wider than the District of Columbia, 
and the problem to be solved one in which not they alone are in- 
terested. When Congress determined* that the time had come 
when slavery should be abolished in this District, and the capital 
of the nation should no longer be disgraced by its presence, did 
it pause in the great work of justice to w^hich it laid its hand to 
hear from the mayor of Washington, or to inquire whether the 
masters would vote for it? It is not difficult to conjecture what 
the fate of that great measure would have been had its adoption 
or rejection depended upon the voters of this District. 

" Shall we be told, sir, that if the Representatives of the people 
of twenty-five States are of the opinion that the laws and insti- 
tutions which exist in the seat of Government of the United 
States ought to be changed, that they are not to be changed be- 
cause a majority of the voters who reside here do not desire that 
change ? Will any man say that the voices of these seven thou- 
sand voters are to outweigh the voices of all the constituencies 
of the United States in the capital of their counby? I dismiss 
this objection, therefore, as totally destitute of reason or weight. 
It is based upon a fallacy so feeble that it is dissipated by the 
bare touch of the Constitution to it. 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 85 

"Whatever is the duty of the United States to do, that is for 
their interest to do. The two great facts written in history by 
the Iron hand of the hite war are, first, that the Union is indis- 
soluble, and second, that human slavery is here forever abolished. 
From these two facts consequences corresponding in importance 
with the facts themselves must result: from the former, a more 
vigorous and powerful nationality; from the latter, the elevation 
and improvement of the race liberated by the war from bondage, 
as well as a higher and more advanced civilization in the region 
where the change has taken place. It is impossible to say that 
the African race occupies to-day the same position in American 
affairs and counts no more in weight than it did before the rebell- 
ion. You can not strike the fetters from the limbs of four mill- 
ion men and leave them such as you found them. As wide as 
is the interval between a freeman and a slave, so wide is the dif- 
ference between the African race before the rebellion and after 
the rebellion. You can not keep to its ancient level a race which 
has been released from servitude any more than you can keep 
back the ocean with your hand after you have thrown down the 
sea-wall which restrained its impatient tides. Freedom is every- 
where in history the herald of progress. It is written in the 
annals of all nations. It fs a law of the human race. Ignorance, 
idleness, brutality — these belong to slavery ; they are her natural 
offspring and allies, and the gentleman from New York, [Mr. 
Chanler,] who consumed so much time in demonstrating the com- 
parative inferiority of the black race, answered his own argument 
Avhen he reminded us that the Constitution recognized the negro 
only as a slave, and gave us the strongest reason why we should 
now begin to recognize him as a freeman. Sir, I do not doubt 
that the negro race is inferior to our own. That is not the ques- 
tion. You do not advance an inch in the argument after you 
have proved that premise of your case. You must show that 
they are not only inferior, but that they are so ignorant and de- 
graded that they can not be safely intrusted with the smallest 
conceivable part of political power and responsibility, and that 
this is the case not on the plantations of Alabama and Missis- 
sippi, but here in the District of Columbia. Nay, you must not 
only prove that this is the general character of this population 
here, but that this condition is so universal and unexceptional 
that you can not allow them to take this first step in freedom. 



86 THE THIRTY-KIJ{TR COJfGBESS. 

although it may be hedged about with qualifications and condi- 
tions; for which of you who have opposed this measure on the 
ground of race has proj)Osed to give the benefit of it to such as 
may be found worthy? Not one of you. And this shows that 
your objection is founded really on a prejudice, although it as- 
sumes the dignity and pro^jortions of an argument. The real 
question, sir, is, can we afford to be just — nay, if you please, gen- 
erous — to a race whose shame has been washed out in the con- 
suming fires of war, and which now stands erect and equal before 
the law with our own? Shall we give hope and encouragement 
to that race beginning, as it does now for the first time, its career 
of freedom, by erecting here in the capital of the republic a ban- 
ner inscribed with the sacred legend of the elder days, ' All men 
are born free and equal ? ' or shall we unfurl in its stead that other 
banner, with a strange device, around which the dissolving rem- 
nants of the Democratic party in this hall are called upon to 
rally, inscribed with no great sentiment of justice or generosity, 
but bearing upon its folds the miserable ajjpeal of the demagogue, 
'This is a white man's Government?' When you inaugurate 
your newly-discovered political principle, do not forget to invite 
the colored troops ; beat the assembly ; call out the remnants of 
the one hundred and eighty thousand men who marched with 
steady step through the flames and carnage of war, and many of 
whom bear upon their bodies the honorable scars received in that 
unparalleled struggle and in your defense, and as you send your 
banner down the line, say to them, ' This is the reward of a gen- 
erous country for the wounds you have received and the sufferings 
you have endured.' 

" Shall we follow the great law to which I have referred — the 
law that liberty is progress — and conform our policy to the spirit 
of that great law? or shall we, governed by unreasonable and 
selfish prejudices, initiate a policy which will make this race our 
hereditary enemy, a mine beneath instead of a buttress to the 
edifice which you are endeavoring to repair? Sir, I do not hesi- 
tate to say that, in my opinion, it were better to follow where 
conscience and justice point, leaving results to a higher Power, 
than to shrink from an issue which .it is the clear intention of 
Providence we shall face, or to be driven from our true course by 
the chimeras which the excited imaginations of political partisans 
have conjured up, or by the misty ghosts of long-buried errors." 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 87 

Mr. Van Horn, of New York, while willing to accept the bill 
as originally presented, preferred it as modified by Mr. Hale's 
amendments. In his speech he charged those who had opposed 
the bill as laboring in the interest of slavery. 

" They seem to have forgotten," he said, " in their advocacy of 
slavery, that we have passed throngh a fierce war, begun by 
slavery, waged against the Government by slavery, and solely in 
its interest to more thoroughly establish itself upon the Western 
Continent, and crush out the best interests of freedom and human- 
ity ; and that this war, guided on our part by the omnipotent arm 
of the Invisible, made bare in our behalf, has resulted in a most 
complete overthrow of this great wrong ; and by the almost om- 
nipotent voice of the republic, as now expressed in its fundamental 
law, it has no right to live, much less entitled to the right of burial, 
and should have no mourners in the land or going about the streets. 
Such sjjeeches as those of the gentlemen from New Jersey, [Mr.. 
Rogers,] and from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Boyer,] and my colleague 
and friend, [Mr. Chanler,] who represents, with myself, in part, 
the Empire State, carry us back to the days and scenes before the 
war, when slavery ruled supreme, not only throughout the land, 
by and through its hold upon power, which the people in an evil 
hour had given it, but here in these halls of legislation, where 
liberty and its high and noble ends ought to have been secured 
by just and equal laws, and the great and paramount object of 
our system of government carried out and fully developed. They 
seem to forget that liberty and good government have been on trial 
during these five years last j)ast of war and blood, and that they 
have succeeded in the mighty struggle. They forget that Provi- 
dence, in a thousand ways, during this fierce conflict, has given us 
evidence of his favor, and led us out of the land of bondage into 
a purer and higher state of freedom, where slavery, as an institu- 
tion among us, is no more. Why do they labor so long and so 
ardently to resurrect again into life this foul and loathsome thing ? 
Why can not they forget their former love and attachments" in this 
direction, and no longer cling with such undying grasp to this 
dead carcass, which, by its corruptions and rottenness, has well 
nigh heretofore poisoned them to the death? Why not awake to 
the new order of things, and accept the results which God has 
worked out in our recent struggle, and not raise the weak arm 
of flesh to render null and void what has thus been done, and 



88 THE THIRTY-mJfTH COjYGBESS. 

thus attempt to turn back the flow of hfe which is overspread- 
ing all, and penetrating every part of the body politic with its 
noble purposes and exalted hopes ? " 

Thursday, January 18, was the last day of the discussion of 
this important measure in the House of Representatives. When 
the subject was in order, Mr. Clarke, of Kansas, " as the only 
Hepresentative upon the floor of a State whose whole history had 
been a continual protest against political injustice and wrong," 
after having advocated the bill by arguments drawn from the 
history of the country and the record of the negro race, remarked 
as follows : " This cry of poverty and ignorance is not new. I 
remember that those who first followed the Son of man, the Savior 
of the world, were not the learned rabbis, not the enlightened 
scholar, not the rich man or the pious Pharisee. They were the 
poor and needy, the peasant and the fisherman. I remember, also, 
that the more learned the slaveholder, the greater the rebel. I 
remember that no black skin covered so false a heart or misdirected 
brain, that when the radiant banner of our nationality was near 
or before him, he did not understand its meaning, and remained 
loyal to its demands. The man capable of taking care of himself, 
of wife and children, and, in addition to his unrequited toil, to 
hold up his oppressor, must have intelligence enough, in the long 
run, to wield the highest means of protection we can give. 

" But, sir, it is for our benefit, as well as for the benefit of the 
proscribed class, that I vote for and support impartial manhood 
suffrage in this District. We can not afford, as a nation, to keep 
any class ignorant or oppress the weak. We must establish here 
republican government. That wdiich wrongs one man, in the end 
recoils on the many. Sir, if we accept, as the Republican party 
of the Union, our true position and our duty, we shall nobly win. 
If we are false and recreant, we shall miserably fail. Let us have 
faith in the people and the grand logic of a mighty revolution, 
and dare to do right. Class legislation will be the inevitable 
result of class power ; and what would follow, so far as the col- 
ored race are concerned, let the recent tragedy of Jamaica answer. 

" The princijjles involved in the arguments jjut forth on the 
other side of the House are not alone destructive to the rights 
of the defenseless, intelligent, and patriotic colored men of this 
District, but they militate with a double effect and stronger pur- 
pose against the poor whites of the North and of the South, against 




..^<x?!^^<^>^^-^^-^U^«^X^^^2^,^^^^-<^- -^^^-el. 



I 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 80 

the German, the Irislunan, and the poor and oppressed of every 
race, wlio eonie to onr shores to escape the o])pressIon of despotic 
governnicnts, and to seek the protection of a Government the true 
theory of Avhich rei)oscs in every citizen a portion of its sovereign 
power. Against this attempt to deny or abridge in any way the 
rights of the weak, the poor, and the defenseless, and to transfer 
the governing power of the nation to the favored chisscs, to the 
rich and the powerful, and thus change the very purpose and 
principles of our republican system, I protest in the name of con- 
stitutional freedom, and in behalf of equal rights and equal laws. 

" I protest against this stealthy innovation upon popular rights, 
in the name of the toiling millions of the land ; and I warn the 
House and the country of the untold mischief and disaster which 
must come to distract and divide the republic in the future, if we 
follow the pernicious and destructive doctrines founded upon either 
the prejudices of class, caste, wealth, or power. I protest in the 
name of a constituency whose early history was a sublime and 
persistent struggle against the prejudices of pampered and arro- 
gant ruffianism at home, and the worse than ruffian spirit of the 
Administrations of Pierce and Buchanan, and the Democratic 
traitors who at that time constituted a majority of this House, 
and were engaged In preparing the nation for Its harvest of blood. 
We must go back to the spirit and purposes of the founders of our 
Government. We must accept the grand logic of the mighty 
revolution from which we are now emerging. We must repudi- 
ate, now and forever, these assaults upon the masses of the people 
and upon the fundamental principles of popular rights. I accept 
In their full force and effect the principles of the Declaration of 
Independence, and by constitutional amendment and law of Con- 
gress I would stamp them with Irrevocable power upon the polit- 
ical escutcheon of the new and regenerated republic. I would 
avoid the mistakes of the past, and I would spurn that cringing 
timidity by which, through all history, liberty has been sacrificed 
and humanity betrayed. 

" Sir, I hesitate not to say that If we do not gather up. In the 
procCvSS of national reconstruction, the enduring safeguards of future 
peace, we shall be false to our history and unmindful of the grand 
responsibilities now devolving upon us. The establishment of 
Impartial suffrage In this District will be a fitting commence- 
ment of the work. It will be hailed by the friends of freedom 



90 THE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COJfGRESS. 

every-where as a return to a policy of national justice too long 
delayed. In behalf of the State I have the honor to represent, 
and upon whose soil this contest for a larger liberty and a nobler 
nationality was first submitted to the arbitrament of arms, I hail 
this measure with feelings of satisfaction and f)ride. It is the 
legitimate result of the courage and fidelity of the hardy pioneers 
of Kansas in 1856, who dared to face the blandishment of power 
and the arrogance and brutality of slavery when compromisers 
trembled, and Northern sycoi)hants of an oligarchic despotism, 
then, as now, scowled and fretted at the progress of free prin- 
ciples." 

Mr. Johnson, of Pennsylvania, after having adduced a variety 
of arguments against the bill, finally said : " Sir, we hear a tre- 
mendous outcry in this House in favor of popular government 
and about the guarantee of the Constitution of the United States 
to the several States that they shall have republican governments. 
How are the poor people of this District to have a republican 
form of government if gentlemen who have come to this city, per- 
haps for the first time iu their lives, undertake to control them as 
absolutely and arbitrarily as Louis Napoleon controls France or 
Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask. What right have they to 
hold an election and express their sentiments ? What right have 
they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to have the 
right to petition, for their rulers are generally arbitrary enough. 

" Mr. Speaker, it seems to me ridiculously inconsistent for gen- 
tlemen upon this floor to prate so much about a republican form 
of government, and rise here and oSer resolution after resolution 
about the Monroe doctrine and the downtrodden Mexicans, while 
they force upon the people of this District a government not of 
their own choice, because the voter in a popular government is a 
governor himself. But, sir, this is only part of a grand plan. 
Gentlemen who dare not go before their white constituents and 
urge that a negro shall have a vote in their own States, come here 
and undertake to thrust negro suffrage upon the people here. 
Gentlemen whose States have repudiated the idea of giving the 
elective franchise to negroes, come here and are willing to give 
the sufirage to negroes here, as if they intended to make this little 
District of Columbia a sort of negro Eden ; as if they intended to 
say to the negroes of Virginia and Maryland and Delaware, 
' You have no right to vote in these States, but if you will go to 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 91 

Washington you can vote there.' I imagine I can see them 
swarming up from different sections of the country to this city 
and inquiring where the polls are. Agents, men and women, 
such as there are at work in this city, Avill no doubt be at work in 
these States, telling them to pack their knapsacks and march to 
Washington, for on such a day there is to be an election, and 
there they will have the glorious privilege of the white man. Sir, 
all this doctrine is destructive of the American system of govern- 
ment, which recognizes the right of no man to participate in it 
unless he is a citizen, which secures to the citizen his voice in the 
control and management of the Government, and prevents those 
not citizens from standing in the way of the exercise of his just 
rights. 

" This Government does not belong to any race so that it can be 
divested or disposed of. The present age have no right to termi- 
nate it. It is ours to enjoy and administer, and to transmit to 
posterity unimjiaired as we received it from the fathers." 

Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, then addressed the House: 
"When we emancipated the black people, we not only relieved 
ourselves from the institution of slavery, we not only conferred 
upon them freedom, but we did more, we recognized their man- 
hood, which, by the old Constitution and the general policy and 
usage of the country, had been, from the organization of the Gov- 
ernment until the Emancipation Proclamation, denied to all of the 
enslaved colored people. As a consequence of the recognition of 
their manhood, certain results follow in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of this Government, and they who believe in this Govern- 
ment are, by necessity, forced to accept those results as a conse- 
quence of the policy of emancipation which they have inaugurated 
and for which they are responsible. 

" But to say now, having given freedom to them, that they shall 
not enjoy the essential rights and privileges of men, is to abandon 
the principle of the proclamation of emancipation, and tacitly to 
admit that the whole emancipation policy is erroneous. 

"It has been suggested that it is premature to demand imme- 
diate action upon the question of negro suffrage in the District of 
Columbia. I am not jiersonally responsible for the presence of 
the bill at the present time, but I am responsible for the observa- 
tion that there never has been a day during a session of Congress 
since the Emancipation Proclamation, ay, since the negroes of this 



9B THE THIRTY-KIMTH COJ^GBESS. 

District were emancipated, when it was not the duty of the Gov- 
ernment which, by the Constitution, is intrusted with exclusive 
jurisdiction in this District, to confer upon the men of this Dis- 
trict, without distinction of race or color, the rights and privileges 
of men. And, therefore, there can be nothing premature in this 
measure, and I can not see how any one who supports the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation, which is a recognition of the manhood of 
the whole colored people of this country, can hesitate as to his 
duty ; and while I make no suggestion as to the duty of other 
men, I have a clear perception of my own. And, first, we are 
bound to treat the colored people of this District, in regard to the 
matter of voting, precisely as we treat white people. And I do 
not hesitate to express the opinion that if the question here to-day 
were whether any qualification should be imposed upon white 
voters in this District, if they alone were concerned, this House 
would not, ay, not ten men upon this floor would, consider whether 
any qualifications should be imposed or not. 

"Reading and writing, or reading, as a qualification, is de- 
manded, and an appeal is made to the example of Massachusetts. 
I wish crentlemen w^ho now appeal to Massachusetts would often 
appeal to her in other matters w^here I can more conscientiously 
approve her policy. But it is a different proposition in Massa- 
chusetts as a practical measure. When, ten years ago, this quali- 
fication was imposed upon the people of Massachusetts, it excluded 
no person who was then a voter. For two centuries we have had 
in Massachusetts a system of public instruction open to the chil- 
dren of the whole people without money and v.ithout price. 
Therefore all the people there had had opportunities for education. 
Now, why should the example of such a state be quoted to justify 
refusing suffrage to men who have been denied the privilege of 
education, and whom it has been a crime to teach? Is there no 
difference? 

" We are to answer for our treatment of the colored people of 
this country, and it will prove in the end impracticable to secure 
to men of color civil rights unless the persons who claim those 
rights are fortified by the political right of voting. With the 
right of voting, every thing that a man ought to have or enjoy of 
civil rights comes to him. Without the right to vote, he is secure 
in notliing. I can not consent, after all the guards and safeguards 
which may be prepared for the defense of the colored men in the 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 93 

enjoyment of their rights — I can not consent that they shall be 
deprived of the right to protect themselves. One hundred and 
eighty-six thousand of them have been in the army of the United 
States. They have stood in the place of our sons and brothers 
and friends. They have fallen in defense of the country. They 
have earned the right to share in the Government; and if you 
deny them the elective franchise, I know not how they are to be 
protected. Otherwise you furnish the protection which is given 
to the lamb when he is commended to the wolf. 

" There is an ancient history that a sparrow pursued by a hawk 
took refuge in the chief assembly of Athens, in the bosom of a 
member of that illustrious body, and that the senator in anger 
hurled it violently from him. It fell to the ground dead, and 
such was the horror and indignation of that ancient but not 
Christianized body— men living in the light of nature, of rea- 
son — that they immediately expelled the brutal Areopagite from 
his seat, and from the association of humane legislators. 

" What will be said of us, not by Christian, but by heathen 
nations ever., if, after accepting the blood and sacrifices of these 
men, we hurl them from us and allow them to be the victims of 
those who have tyrannized over them for centuries? I know of 
*no crime that exceeds this; I know of none that is its parallel; 
and if this country is true to itself, it will rise in the majesty of 
its strength and maintain a policy, here and every-where, by 
which the rights of the colored people shall be secured through 
their own power — in peace, the ballot; in war, the bayonet. 

" It is a maxim of another language, which Ave may well apply 
to ourselves, that where the voting register ends the military ros- 
ter of rebellion begins ; and if you leave these four million people 
to the care and custody of the men who have inaugurated and car- 
ried on this rebellion, then you treasure up for untold years the 
elements of social and civil war, which must not only desolate and 
paralyze the South, but shake this Government to its very fomida- 
tion." 

Soon after the close of Mr. Boutwell's speech, Mr. Darling's 
motion to postpone and Mr. Hale's motion to amend having been 
rejected, a vote was taken on the bill as reported by the commit- 
tee. The bill passed by a vote of one hundred and sixteen in 
the affirmative— fifty-four voting in the negative. 

The friends of the measure having received evidence that it 



94 THE THIBTY-KIKTE COJVGRESS. 

would not meet with Executive approval, and not supposing that 
a vote of two-thirds could be secured for its passage over the 
President's veto, determined not to urge it immediately through 
the Senate. 

There was great reluctance on the part of many Senators and 
members of the House to come to an oj^en rupture with the 
President. They desired to defer the day of final and irrecon- 
cilable difference between Congress and the Executive. If the 
subject of negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was kept in 
abeyance for a time, it was hoped that the President's approval 
might meanwhile be secured to certain great measures for pro- 
tecting the helpless and maintaining the civil rights of citizens. 
To accomplish these imj)ortant ends, the suffrage bill was deferred 
many months. The will of the majority in Congress relating to 
this subject did not become a law until after the opening of the 
second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress. 



THE FBEEDMEJf. 95 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FREEDMEN. 

Necessities of the Freedmen — Committee in the House — Early move- 
ment BY the Senate in behalf op Freedmen — Senator Wilson's Bill — 
Occasion for it — Mr. Cowan moves its reference — Mr. Reverdy John- 
son advises deliberation — ^A question of time with Mr. Sherman — Mr. 
Trumbull promises a more efficient bill — Mr. Sumner presents proof 
op the bad condition of affairs in the South — Mr. Cowan and Mr. 
Stewart produce the President as a witness for the defense — Mr. 
Wilson on the testimony — "Conservatism" — The bill absorbed in 
greater measures. * 

THE necessities of three millions and a half of persons made 
free as a result of the rebellion demanded early and efficient 
legislation at the hands of the Thirty-ninth Congress. In 
vain did the Proclamation of Emancipation break their shackles, 
and the constitutional amendment declare them free, if Congress 
should not " enforce " these important acts by " appropriate legis- 
lation." 

The House of Representatives signified its view of the impor- 
tance of this subject by constituting an able Committee " on 
Freedmen," with Thomas D. Eliot, of Massachusetts, as its chair- 
man. The Senate, however, was first to take decided steps toward 
the protection and relief of freedmen. We have seen that on the 
first day of the session Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, intro- 
duced a bill " to maintain the freedom of the inhabitants in the 
States declared in insurrection and rebellion by the proclamation 
of the President of the 1st of July, 1862," of which the following 
is a copy: 

Be it enacted, etc., That all laws, statutes, acts, ordinances, rules and regu- 
lations, of any description whatsoever, heretofore in force or held valid in 
any of the States which were declared to be in insurrection and rebellion by 



96 THE TEIBTY-jXIjXTE COi^GRESS. 

the proclamation of the President of the 1st of July, 1862, whereby or 
wherein anv inequality of civil rights and immunities among the inhabitants 
of said States is recognized, authorized, established, or maintained, by reason 
or in consequence of any distinctions or differences of color, race, or descent, 
or by reason or in consequence of a previous condition or status of slavery 
or involuntary servitude of such inhabitants, be, and are hereby, declared 
null and void; and it shall be unlawful to institute, make, ordain, or establish, 
in any of the aforesaid States declared to be in insurrection and rebellion, 
any siich law, statute, act, ordinance, rule, or regulation, or to enforce, or to 
attempt to enforce, the same. 

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted^ That any person who shall violate either 
of the provisions of this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and 
shall be punished by a fine of not less than $500 nor exceeding $10,000, and 
by imprisonment not less than six months nor exceeding five years; and it 
shall be the duty of the President to enforce the provisions of this act. 

* On the 13th of December, Mr. Wilson called uj) his bill, which 
the Senate proceeded to consider as in Committee of the AVhole. 
The author of the bill presented reasons why it should become a 
law : " A bill is pending before the Legislature of South Carolina 
making these freedmen servants, providing that the persons for 
whom they labor shall be their masters ; that the relation between 
them shall be the relation of master and servant. The bill, as 
originally reported, provided that the freedmen might be educated, 
but that provision has already been stricken out, and the bill now 
lies over waiting for events here. That bill makes the colored 
people of South Carolina serfs, a degraded class, the slaves of 
society. It is far better to be the slave of one man than to be the 
slave of arbitrary law. There is no doubt of the fact that in a 
great portion of those States the high hopes, the confidence, and 
the joy expressed last spring by the freedmen, have passed away ; 
that silence and sorrow pervade that section of the country, and 
that they are becoming distrustful and discontented. God grant 
that the high-raised expectations of these loyal and deserted people 
may not be blasted. God forbid that X\Q should violate our plighted 
faith." 

Mr. Cowan moved the reference of the bill to the Committee 
on the Judiciary, but its author was unwilling that it should be 
so referred, since it was highly important that action should be 
had upon it before the holidays. 

Mr. Johnson said that the bill gave rise to grave questions on 
which it was very desirable that the deliberation of the Senate 
should be very cahuly advised, lie objected on. the ground of 



THE FBE^DMEJT. 97 

its indcfinltcncss : " There are no particular laws designated in 
the bill to be repealed. All laws existing before these States got 
into a condition of insurrection, by which any difference or ine- 
quality is created or established, arc to be repealed. What is to 
be the effect of that repeal upon such laws as they exist? In 
some of those States, by the constitution or by the laws, (and the 
constitution is equally a law,) persons of the African race are ex- 
cluded from certain political privileges. Are they to be repealed, 
and at once, by force of that rejieal, are they to be placed exactly 
upon the same footing in regard to all political privileges with that 
which belongs to the other class of citizens ? Very many of those 
laws are laws passed under the police j)Ower, which has always 
been conceded as a power belonging to the States — laws supposed 
to have been necessary in order to protect the States themselves 
from insurrection. Are they to be repealed absolutely? 

" No man feels more anxious certainly than I do that the rights 
incident to the condition of freedom, which is now as I person- 
ally am glad to believe, the condition of the black race, should 
not be violated ; but I do not know that there is any more press- 
ing need for extraordinary legislation to prevent outrages uj)on 
that class, by any thing which is occurring in the Southern States, 
than there is for preventing outrages in the loyal States. Crimes 
are being perpetrated every day in the very justly-esteemed State 
from which the honorable member comes. Hardly a paper fails 
to give us an account of some most atrocious and horrible crime. 
Murders shock the sense of that community and the sense of the 
United States very often ; and it is not peculiar to Massachusetts. 
Moral by her education, and loving freedom and hating injustice 
as much as the people of any other State, she yet is unable to pre- 
vent a violation of every principle of human rights, but we are 
not for that reason to legislate for her." 

]Mr. Wilson replied : " The Senator from Maryland says that 
cruelties and great crimes are committed in all sections of the 
country. I know it; but we have not cruel and inhuman laws to 
be enforced. Sir, armed men are traversing portions of the rebel 
States to-day enforcing these black laws upon men whom we have 
made free, and to whom we stand pledged before man and God to 
maintain their freedom. A few months ago these freedmen were 
joyous, hopeful, confident. To-day they are distrustful, silent, 
and sad, and this condition has grown out of the Avrongs and 
7 



98 TEE TIIIRTY-MI:N'TH COJfGHJESS. 

cruelties and oppressions that have been perpetrated upon 

them." 

Mr. Sherman said : " I believe it is the duty of Congress to 
give to the frcedmen of the Southern States ample protection in 
all their natural rights. AVith me it is a question simply of time 
and manner. I submit to the Senator of Massachusetts whether 
this is the time for the introduction of this bill. I believe it 
would be wiser to postpone all action upon this subject until the 
proclamation of the Secretary of State shall announce that the 
constitutional amendment is a part of the supreme law of the land. 
When that is done, there will then be, in my judgment, no doubt 
of the power of Congress to pass this bill, and to make it definite 
and general in its terms. 

"Then, as I have said, it is a question of manner. When this 
question comes to be legislated upon by Congress, I do not wish 
it to be left to the uncertain and ambiguous language of this bill. 
I think that the rights which we desire to secure to the freedmen 
of the South should be distinctly specified. 

" The language ot this bill is not sufficiently definite and dis- 
tinct to inform the people of the United States of precisely the 
character of rights intended to be secured by it to the freedmen 
of the Southern States. The bill in its terms applies only to 
those States which were declared to be in insurrection; and the 
same criticism would apply to this part of it that I have already 
made, that it is not general in its terms." 

Mr. Trumbull made some remarks of great significance, as fore- 
shadowing important measures soon to occupy the attention of 
Congress and the country : 

"I hold that under that second section Congress will have 
the authority, when the constitutional amendment is adopted, 
not only to pass the bill of the Senator from Massachusetts, but 
a bill that will be much more efficient to protect the freedman in 
his rights. AVe may, if deemed advisable, continue the Freed- 
man's Bureau, clothe it with additional powers, and, if necessary, 
back it up with a military force, to see that the rights of the men 
made free by the first clause of the constitutional amendment are 
protected. And, sir, when the constitutional amendment shall 
have been adopted, if the information from the South be that the 
men whose liberties are secured by it are deprived of the xmvilege 
to go and come when they please, to buy and" sell when they 



THE FREEDMEJf. 99 

please, to Inakc contracts and enforce contracts, I give notice tliat, 
if no one else docs, I shall introduce a bill, and urge its passage 
through Congress, that will secure to those men every one of these 
rights ; they would not be freemen without them. It is idle to 
say that a man is free who can not go and come at pleasure, who 
can not buy and sell, who can not enforce his rights. These are 
rights M'hich the first clause of the constitutional amendment 
meant to secure to all." 

On a subsequent day, December 20, 18G5, when this subject 
Mas again before the Senate, Mr. Sumner spoke in its favor. Re- 
ferring to the message of the President on the " Condition of the 
Southern States," the Senator said: 

" When I think of what occurred yesterday in this chamber ; 
when I call to mind the attempt to whitewash the unhappy con- 
dition of the rebel States, and to throw the mantle of official ob- 
livion over sickening and heart-rending outrages, where human 
rights are sacrificed and rebel barbarism receives a new letter of 
license, I feel that I ought to speak of nothing else. I stood here 
years ago, in the days of Kansas, when a small community was 
surrendered to the machinations of slave-masters. I now stand 
here again, when, alas ! an immense region, with millions of peo- 
ple, has been surrendered to the machinations of slave-masters. 
Sir, it is the duty of Congress to arrest this fatal fury. Congress 
must dare to be brave; it must dare to be just." 

After having quoted copiously from the great Russian act by 
which the freedom given to the serfs by the Emperor's proclama- 
tion " was secured," and having emphasized them as examples for 
American legislation, Mr. Sumner said : 

" My colleague is clearly right in introducing his bill and press- 
ing it to a vote. The argument for it is irresistible. It is essen- 
tial to complete emancipation. Without it emancipation will be 
only half done. It is our duty to see that it is wholly done. 
Slavery must be abolished not in form only, but in substance, so 
that there shall be no black code; but all shall be equal before 
the law." 

He then read extracts from letters and documents, showing the 
hostile sentiments of the people, and the unhappy condition of 
the colored population in nearly all of the rebel States, and closed 
by saying : " I bring this plain story to a close. I regret that 
I have been constrained to present it. I wish it were otherwise. 



100 THE THIRTY-JfIJ{TH COJVGRUSS. 

But I should have failed in duty had I failed to speak'. Not in 
anger, not in vengeance, not in harshness have I spoken; but 
solemnly, carefully, and for the sake of my country and human- 
ity, that peace and reconciliation may again prevail. I have 
spoken csj^ecially for the loyal citizens who are now trodden 
down by rebel power. You have before you the actual condition 
of the rebel States. You have heard the terrible testimony. 
The blood curdles at the thought of such enormities, and espe- 
cially at the thought that the poor freedmen, to whom we owe 
protection, are left to the unrestrained will of such a people 
smarting with defeat, and ready to wreak vengeance upon these 
representatives of a true loyalty. In the name of God let us 
protect them. Insist upon guarantees. Pass the bill now under 
consideration; pass any bill; but do not let this crying injustice 
rage any longer. An avenging God can not sleep while such 
things find countenance. If you are not ready to be the Moses 
of an oppressed people, do not become its Pharaoh." 

Mr. Cowan rebuked the Senator from Massachusetts for apply- 
ing the term " whitewash " to the message of the President. He 
then charged Mr. Sumner with reading from "anonymous letter- 
writers, from cotton agents, and people of that kind," and placed 
against them "the testimony of the President of the United 
States, not a summer soldier, or a sunshine patriot, who was 
a Union man, and who Avas in favor of the Union at a time and 
in a place when there was some merit in it. He then pro- 
ceeded to read extracts from the President's message and General 
Grant's report. 

On a subsequent day, Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, made a speech 
in opposition to the positions assumed by Mr. Sumner. He de- 
clared his opinion that " if the great mass of the people of the 
South are capable of the atrocities attributed to them by the 
anonymous witnesses paraded before this Senate, then a union 
of these States is impossible ; then hundreds and thousands of the 
bravest and best of our land have fallen to no purpose; then 
every house, from the gulf to the lakes, is draped in mourning 
without an object ; then three thousand millions of indebtedness 
himgs like a pall upon the pride and prosperity of the people, 
only to admonish us that the war was wicked, useless, and 
cruel." 

After making the remark, "In judging of testimony upon 



TEE FBEEDMEJ^. 101 

ordinary subjects, we take into consldoration not only the facts 
stattxl/but the character and standing of the witness, his means 
of information, and last, but not least, his appearance upon the 
stand," Mr. Stewart thus spoke -in bclialf of the principal wit- 
ness relied upon in the defense of the South : " In this great 
cause, the Senate properly called upon the chief Executive of the 
nation for information. Was he a witness whose character and 
standing before the country would entitle his testimony to con- 
sideration ? Let the voice of a great people, who have indorsed 
his patriotism and administration, answer. Were his means of 
information such as to entitle him to speak advisedly upon this 
subject? Let the machinery of the Government, that collects 
facts from every department, civil and military, upon the table 
of the Executive, answer. Was not his appearance befpre the 
public, in communicating this testimony to the Senate and the 
country such as to remove all grounds of suspicion? Let the 
exalted tone, bold and fearless statement, pure and patriotic spirit 
of both his messages be his best vindication." 

The Senator's remarks were principally directed in opposition 
to the policy of regarding the rebel States as "conquered terri- 
tories." He finally remarked : " I wish to be distinctly under- 
stood as not ojiposing the passage of the bill. I am in favor of 
legislation on this subject, and such legislation as shall secure the 
freedom of those who were formerly slaves, and their equality 
before the law; and I maintain that it can be fully secured with- 
out holding the Southern States in territorial subjugation." 

Mr. Wilson replied : " The Senator who has just addressed us 
questions the testimony adduced here by my colleague yesterday. 
He might as well question the massacre at Fort Pillow, and the 
cruelties perpetrated at Andersonville, where eighty-three per cent, 
of the men who entered the hospitals died — Andersonville, where 
more American soldiers lie buried than fell throughout the Mexi- 
can war; where more American soldiers lie buried than were 
killed in battle of British soldiers in Wellington's four great bat- 
tles in Spain, and at Waterloo, Alma, Inkermann, and Sebastopol. 
The Senator might as well question the atrocities of sacked Law- 
rence and other atrocities committed during the war. If he will 
go into the Freedman's Bureau, and examine and study the offi- 
cial records of officers who, for five or six months, have taken 
testimony and have large volumes of sworn facts ; if he will go 



102 THE THIRTT-JflJfTH CO^'GRESS. 

into the office of General Holt, and read the reports there, his 
heart and soul will be made sick at the wrongs man does to his 
fellow-man." 

The Senator, in the course of his remarks, took occasion to ex- 
press his opinion of " conservatism : " "■ Progress is to be made 
only by fidelity to the great cause by which we have stood dur- 
ing the past four years of bloody war. For twenty-five years we 
hud a conflict of ideas, of words, of thoughts — words and thoughts 
stronger than cannon-balls. We have had four years of bloody 
conflict. Slavery, every thing that belongs or pertains to it, lies 
prostrate before us to-day, and the foot of a regenerated nation is 
upon it. There let it lie forever. I hope no words or thoughts 
of a reactionary character are to be uttered in either house of 
Congress. 1 hope nothing is to be uttered here in the name of 
' conservatism,' the worst word in the English language. If there 
is a word in the English language that means treachery, servility, 
and cowardice, it is that word ^conservative.' It ought never 
hereafter to be on the lips of an American statesman. For twenty 
years it has stood in America the synonym of meanness and base- 
ness. I have studied somewhat carefully the political history of 
the country during the last fifteen or twenty years, and I have al- 
ways noticed that wdien I heard a man prate about being a con- 
servative and about conservatism, he w^as about to do some mean 
thing. [Laughter.] I never knew it to fail ; in fact, it is about 
the first word a man utters when he begins to retreat." 

Mr. Wilson declared his motives in proposing this bill, and 
yet cheerfully acquiesced in its probable fate : " Having read hun- 
dreds of pages of records and of testimony, enough to make the 
heart and soul sick, I proposed this bill as a measure of humanity. 
I desired, before we entered on the great questions of j)ublic pol- 
icy, that we should pass a simple bill annulling these cruel laws; 
that we should do it early, and then proceed calmly with our 
legislation. That was my motive for bringing this bill into the 
Senate so early in the session. Many of the difficulties occurring 
in tlie rebel States, between white men and black men, between 
the old masters and the freedmen, grow out of these laws. They 
are executed in various parts of the States; the military arrest 
their execution frequently, and the agents of the Freedmen's Bu- 
reau set them aside; and this keeps up a continual conflict. If 
these obnoxious State laws were promptly annulled, it would con- 



THE FREED MEK. 103 

tribute much to tlic restoration of good feeling and harmony, re- 
lieve public oflicers from immense labors, and the freedmen from 
suffering and sorrow ; and this is the opinion of the most expe- 
rienced men engaged in the Frecdmen's Bureau. I have had an 
opportunity to consult with and to communicate with many of 
the agents of the Bureau, with teachers, officers, and persons who 
understand the state of affiiirs in those States. 

" But, sir, it is apparent now that the bill is not to pass at pres- 
ent ; that it must go over for the holidays at any rate. The con- 
stitutional amendment has been adopted, and I have introduced 
a bill this morning based upon that amendment, which has been 
referred to the committee of which the Senator from Illinois 
[Mr. Trumbull] is chairman. This bill will go over; possibly 
it will not be acted upon at all. We shall probably enter on the 
discussion of the broader question of annulHug all the black laws 
in the country, and putting these people under the protection of 
humane, equal, and just laws." 

The presentiment of the author of the bill was realized. The 
bill never saw the light as a law of the land. Nor was it need- 
ful that it should. It contributed to swell the volume of other 
and more sweeping measures. 



104 THE THIBTY-JiliN'TH COJfGRESS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU BILL IN THE SENATE. 

The bill introduced and keferked to Judiciary Committee — Its provis- 
ions — Argument op Mr. Hendricks against it — Reply of Mr. Trum- 
bull — Mr. Cowan's amendment — Mr. Guthrie wishes to relieve 
Kentucky from the operation of the bill — Mr. Creswell desires 
that Maryland may enjoy the benefits of the bill — Mr. Cowan's 
gratitude to God and friendship for the negro — Remarks by Mr. 
Wilson — "The short gentleman's long speech" — Yeas and nays — 
Insulting title. 

ON the 19th of December Mr. Trumbull gave notice that "on 
some early clay " he would " introduce a bill to enlarge the 
powers of the Freedmen's Bureau so as to secure freedom to 
all persons within the United States^ and protect every individual 
in the full enjoyment of the rights of person and property, and 
furnish him with means for their vindication." Of the introduc- 
tion of this measure, he said it would be done "in view of the 
adoption of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. I 
have never doubted that, on the adoption of that amendment, it 
would be competent for Congress to protect every jjerson in the 
United States in all the rights of person and property belonging 
to a free citizen; and to secure these rights is the object of the bill 
which I propose to introduce. I think it important that action 
should be taken on this subject at an early day, for the j^urpose * 
of quieting apprehensions in the minds of many friends of free- 
dom, lest by local legislation or a prevailing public sentiment in 
some of the States, persons of the African race should continue to 
be oppressed, and, in fact, deprived of their freedom ; and for the 
purpose, also, of showing to those among whom slavery has here- 
tofore existed, that unless by local legislation they provide for the 
real freedom of their former slaves, the Federal Government will, 



THE FREED MEM. 105 

by virtue of its own autliority, see tliat they are fully pro- 
tected." 

On the 5th of January, 1866, the first day of the session of 
Congress after the holidays, Mr. Trumbull obtained leave to in- 
troduce a bill " to enlarge the powers of the Frcedmen's Bureau." 
The bill was read twice by its title, and as it contained provisions re- 
lating to the exercise of judicial functions by the officers and agents 
of the Freedmen's Bureau, under certain circumstances, in the late 
insurgent States, it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. 

On the 11th of January Mr. Trumbull reported the bill from 
the Judiciary Committee, to whom it had been referred, with 
some amendments of a verbal character. On the following day 
these amendments were considered by the Senate, in Committee 
of the Whole, and adopted. The consideration of the .bill as 
amended was deferred to a subsequent day. 

The bill provided that " the act to establish a Bureau for the 
relief of Freedmen and Refugees, approved March 3, 1865, shall 
continue until otherwise provided for by law, and shall extend to 
refugees and freedmen in all parts of the United States. The 
President is to be authorized to divide the section of country 
containing such refugees and freedmen into districts, each contain- 
ing one or more States, not to exceed twelve in number, and by 
and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint an as- 
sistant commissioner for each district, who shall give like bond, 
receive the same compensation, and perform the same duties pre- 
scribed by this act and the act to Avhich it is an amendment. 
The bureau may, in the discretion of the President, be placed 
under a commissioner and assistant commissioners, to be detailed 
from the army, in which event each officer so assigned to duty is 
to serve without increase of pay or allo^vances. 

" The commissioner, with the approval of the President, is to 
divide each district into a number of sub-districts, not to exceed 
the number of counties or parishes in each State, and to assign to 
each sub-district at least one agent, either a citizen, officer of the 
army, or enlisted man, who, if an officer, is to serve without ad- 
ditional compensation or allowance, and if a citizen or enlisted 
man, is to receive a salary not exceeding $1,500 per annum. 
Each assistant commissioner may employ not exceeding six 
clerks, one of the third class and five of the first class, and each 
agent of a sub-district may employ two clerks of the first class. 



106 THE THIETr-J^^m^TH COJVGBESS. 

Tlic President of the United States, through the "War Dej)artment 
and the commissioner, is to extend military jurisdiction and pro- 
tection over all employes, agents, and officers of the bureau, and 
the Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, cloth- 
ing, fuel, and other supplies, including medical stores and trans- 
portation, and aiford such aid, medical or otherwise, as he may 
deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply 
of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen, their wives and 
children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct. 

" It is also provided that the President may, for settlement in 
the manner prescribed by section four of the act to which this is 
an amendment, reserve from sale or settlement, under the home- 
stead or preemption laws, public lands in Florida, Mississippi, 
and Arkansas, not to exceed three million acres of good land in 
all, the rental named in that section to be determined in such 
manner as the commissioner shall by regulation prescribe. It 
proposes to confirm and make valid the possessory titles granted 
in pursuance of Major-General Sherman's special field order, 
dated at Savannah, January 16, 1865. The commissioner, under 
the direction of the President, is to be empowered to purchase or 
rent such tracts of land in the several districts as may be neces- 
sary to provide for the indigent refugees and freedmen dependent 
upon the Government for support; also to purchase sites and 
buildings for schools and asylums, to be held as United States 
property until the refugees or freedmen shall purchase the same, 
or tliey shall be otherwise disposed of by the commissioner. 

"Whenever in any State or district in which the ordinary 
course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebell- 
ion, and wherein, in consequence of any State or local law, ordi- 
nance, police or other regulation, custom, or prejudice, any of the 
civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons (including 
the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and 
give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey 
real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of 
all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate), are 
refused or denied to negroes, mulattoes, freedmen, refugees, or any 
other persons, on account of race, color, or any previous condition 
of slavery or involuntary servitude, excejDt as a punishment for 
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or wherein 
they or any of them are subjected to any other or different pun- 



TEE FBEEDMEX. 107 

ishmont, pains, or penalties, for the commission of any act or 
oifcnse, than are prescribed for white persons committing like 
acts or offenses, it is to be the duty of the President of the United 
States, tlirough the commissioner, to extend military protection 
and jurisdiction over all cases affecting such persons so discrim- 
inated against. 

" Any person who, under color of any State or local law, ordi- 
nance, police, or other regulation or custom, shall, in any State or 
district in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has 
been interrupted by the rebellion, subject, or cause to be subjected, 
any negro, mulatto, freedman, refugee, or other person, on account 
of race or color, or any previous condition of slavery or involun- 
tary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted,, or for any other cause, to the de- 
privation of any civil right secured to Avhite persons, or to any 
other or different punishment than white persons are subject to 
for the commission of like acts or offenses, is to be deemed guilty 
of a misdemeanor, and be punished by fine not exceeding §1,000 
or imprisonuient not exceeding one year, or both. It is to be the 
duty of the officers and agents of this bureau to take jurisdiction 
of and hear and determine all offenses committed against this 
provision; and also of all cases affecting negroes, mulattoes, 
freedmen, refugees, or other persons who are discriminated 
against in any of the particulars mentioned in this act, under 
such rules and regulations as the President of the United States, 
through the War Department, may prescribe. This jurisdiction 
is to cease and determine whenever the discrimination on account 
of which it is conferred ceases, and is in no event to be exercised 
in any State in which the- ordinary course of judicial proceedings 
has not been interrupted by the rebellion, nor in any such State 
after it shall have been fully restored in all its constitutional re- 
lations to the United States, and the courts of the State and of 
the United States within its limits are not disturbed or stopped 
in the peaceable course of justice." 

Other business occupying the attention of the Senate, the con- 
sideration of the Freedman's ■ Bureau Bill was not practically 
entered upon until the 18th of January. On that day, Mr. 
Stewart made a speech ostensibly on this bill, but really on the 
question of reconstruction and negro suffrage, in reply to re- 
marks by Mr. Wade on those subjects. 



10 S THE TEIBTY-KIKTE COKGEESS. 

Mr. Trumbull moved as an amendment to the bill that occupants 
Oi land under General Sherman's special field order, dated at Sav- 
annah, January 16, 1865, should be confirmed in their possessions 
fi^r the period of three years from the date of said order, and no 
person should be disturbed in said possession during the said three 
years unless a settlement should be made with said occupant by the 
owner satisfactory to the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. 

Mr. Trumbull explained the circumstances under which the 
freedmen had obtained possessory titles to lands in Georgia, and 
urged the propriety of their being confirmed by Congress for three 
years. He said : 

" I should be glad to go further. I would be glad, if we could, 
to secure to these people, upon any just principle, the fee of this 
land; but I do not see with what, propriety we could except this 
particular tract of country out of all the other lands in the South, 
and appropriate it in fee to these parties. I think, having gone 
upon the land in good faith under the protection of the Govern- 
ment, wx may protect them there for a reasonable time; and the 
opinion of the committee was that three years would be a reason- 
able time." 

On the following day, Mr. Hendricks presented his objections 
tO' the bill in a sj^eech of considerable length. He was followed 
by Mr. Trumbull in reply. As both were members of the Judi- 
ciary Committee from which the bill was reported, and both had 
carefully considered the reasons for and against the measure, their 
arguments are given at length. 

Mr. Hendricks said : " At the last session of Congress the origi- 
nal law creating that bureau was passed. We were then in the 
midst of the war; very considerable territory had been brought 
within the control of the Union troops and armies, and within 
the scope of that territory, it was said, there were many freedmen 
who must be protected by a bill of that sort ; and it was mainly 
upon that argument that the bill was enacted. The Senate was 
very reluctant to enact the law creating the bureau as it now ex- 
ists. There was so much hesitancy on the part of the Senate, that 
by a very large vote it refused to agree to the bill reported by the 
Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] from a committee of 
conference, and I believe the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. 
Trumbull,] who introduced this bill, himself voted against that 
bill ; and why? Tliat bill simply undertook to define the powers 




lAf^^^S^^. 



^"f_:'ly G E Perme^fC' 



-s**- 



ay^ ^^v V j/^^^^^^ of^-Xy^^^i^^^x.^ 



-IGKS. 



SKMATOR FROI/l Ijn: 



THE FBEEBMEN. 109 

and duties of the Frccdinen's Bureau and its agents, and the Sen- 
ate woukl not agree to confer the powers that that bill upon its 
face seemed to confer, and ft was voted down ; and then the law as 
it now stands was enacted in general terms. There was very little 
gained, indeed, by the Senate refusing to pass the first bill and 
enacting the latter, for under the law as it passed, the Freedmen's 
Bureau assumed very nearly all the jurisdiction and to exercise all 
the powers contemplated in the bill reported by the Senator from 
Massachusetts. 

" Now, sir, it is important to note very cUrefully the enlarge- 
ment of the powers of this bureau proposed by this bill ; and in 
the first place, it proposes to make the bureau permanent. The 
last Congress would not agree to this. The bill that the Senate 
voted down did not limit the duration of the bureau, and it was 
voted down, and the bill that the Senate agreed to provided that 
the bureau should continue during the war and only for one year 
after its termination. That Avas the judgment of the Senate at the 
last session. What has occurred since to change the judgment of 
the Senate in this important matter? What change in the condi- 
tion of the country induces the Senate now to say that this shall be 
a permanent bureau or department of the Government, when at 
the last session it said it should cease to exist Avithin one year 
after the conclusion of the war? Why, sir, it seems to me that 
the country is now, and especially the Southern States are now in 
better condition than the Senate had reason to expect when the 
law was enacted. Civil government has been restored in almost 
all the Southern States; the courts are restored in many of 
them*; in many localities they are exercising their jurisdiction 
within their particular localities without let or hmderance; and 
why, I ask Senators, shall we make this bureau a perpetual and 
permanent institution of the Government when we refused to 
do it at the last session ? 

" I ask Senators, in the first place, if they are now, with the 
most satisfactory information that is before the body, willing 
to do that which they refused to do at the last session of Con- 
gress ? We refused to pass the law when it proposed to establish 
a permanent department. Shall we now, when the war is over, 
when the States are returning to their places in the Union, when 
the citizens are returning to their allegiance, when peace and 
quiet, to a very large extent, prevail over that country, when the 



no THE thirtt-:n'ijvth congress. 

courts are reestablished ; is the Senate now, with this information 
before it, willing to make this a permanent bureau and depart- 
ment of the Government ? 

" The next projjosition of the bill is, that it shall not be confined 
any longer to the Southern States, but that it shall have a govern- 
ment over the States of the North as well as of the South, The old 
law allowed the President to appoint a commissioner for each of 
the States that had been declared to be in rebellion — one for each 
of the eleven seceding States, not to exceed ten in all. This bill 
jirovides that the jurisdiction of the bureau shall extend where- 
ever, within the limits of the United States, refugees or freedmen 
have gone. Indiana has not been a State in insurrection, and 
yet there are thousands of refugees and freedmen who have gone 
into that State within the last three years. This bureau is to be- 
come a governing power over the State of Indiana according to 
the provisions of the bill. Indiana, that provides for her own 
paupers, Indiana, that provides for the government of her own 
peo^ile, may, under the provisions of this bill, be placed under a 
government that our fathers never contemplated — a government 
that must be most distasteful to freemen. 

" I know it may be said that the bureau will not probably be 
extended to the Northern States. If it is not intended to be ex- 
tended to those States, why amend the old law so as to give this 
power? When the old law limited the jurisdiction of this bureau 
to the States that had been declared in insurrection, is it not 
enough that the bureau should have included one State, the State 
of Kentucky, over which it had no rightful original jurisdiction? 
And must we now amend it so as to place all the States o'f the 
Union within the power of this irresponsible sub-government? 
This is one objection that I have to the bill, and the next is the 
expense that it must necessarily impose upon the people. We 
are asked by the Freedmen's Bureau in its estimates to appropri- 
ate $11,745,050; nearly twelve million dollar's for the support 
of this bureau and to carry on its operations during the coming 
year.. I will read what he says : 

'"It is estimated that the amount required for the expenditures of the 
bureau for the fiscal year commencing January, 1866, will be $11,745,050. 
The sum is requisite for the following purposes: 

Salaries of assistant and sub-assistant commissioners $147,500 

Salaries of clerks 82,800 



THE FBEEDMEJ^. Ill 

Stationery and pi-intin2; 63,000 

QuartoffS and fuel lOjOOO 

Clothinn; for distribution 1,750,000 

Commissary stores 4,100,250 

Medical department 500,000 

Transportation 1,980,000 

School superintendents 21 ,000 

Sites for school-houses and asylums .1,000,000 

Telegraphing; 18,000 

Making in all tlic sum which I have mentioned. The old 
system under this law, that was before the commissioner when he 
made this estimate, requires an expenditure to carry on its opera- 
tions of nearly twelve million dollars, and that to protect, as it is 
called, and to govern four millions of the people of the United 
States — within a few millions of the entire cost of the Government 
under Mr. Adams's administration, when the population of the 
States had gone up to many millions. How is it that a depart- 
ment that has but a partial jurisdiction over the people shall cost 
almost as much for the management of four million people as it 
cost to manage the whole Government, for its army, its navy, its 
legislative and judicial departments, in former years ? My 
learned friend from Kentucky suggests that the expenses under 
John Quincy Adams's administration WTre about thirteen million 
dollars. "What was the population of the United States at that 
time I am not prepared to state, but it was far above four mill- 
ions. Now, to manage four million people is to cost the people 
of the United States, under the law as it stands, nearly as much 
as it cost the people to manage the whole affairs of the Govern- 
ment under the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams. 

" I hear Senators speak very frequently of the necessity of 
economy and retrenchment. Is this a specimen, increasing the 
number of officers almost without limit, and increasing the ex- 
penditures? I think one might be safe in saying that, if this 
bill passes, we can not expect to get through a year with less 
than §20,000,000 of an expenditure for this bureau. But that 
is a mere opinion ; for no man can tell until we have the number 
of officers that are to be appointed under the bill prescribed in 
the bill itself, and this section leaves the largest discretion to the 
bureau in the appointment of officers. I appeal to Senators to 
know whether, at this time, when we ought to adopt a system of 



112 THt: THIRTY-KIKTH COJ^GRESS. 

retrpncliniont and reform, tlicy are willing to pass a bill which 
will so largely increase the public expenditures. * 

" Then, sir, when this army of officers has been organized, the 
bill provides: ^And the President of the United States, through 
the AVar Department and the commissioner, shall extend mili- 
tary jurisdiction and protection over all employes, agents, and 
officers of this bureau.' 

" Will some Senator be good enough to tell me what that 
means? If Indiana be declared a State within which are found 
refugees and freedmen, who have escajjcd from the Southern 
States, and if Indiana has a commissioner aj)pointed to her, and 
if in each county of Indiana there be a sub-commissioner at a 
salary of $1,500 a year, with two clerks with a salary of §1,200 
each, and then the War Department throws over this little army 
of office-holders in the State of Indiana its protection, what does 
that mean ? The people of Indiana have been ground hard under 
military authority and power within the last three or four years, 
but it was borne because it was hoped that when the war would 
be closed the military power would be withdrawn from the State. 
Under this bill it may be established permanently upon the peo- 
ple by a body of men protected by the military power of the 
Government. An officer is appointed to the State of Indiana to 
regulate the contracts which are made between the white people 
and the colored people of that State, and because he holds this 
office, not military in its character, involving no military act 
whatever, the military throws over him its iron shield of protec- 
tion. What does that mean? If this officer shall do a great 
wrong and outrage to one of the people, and the wronged citizen 
appeals to the court for his redress and brings his suit for dam- 
ages, does the protecting shield of the War Department prevent 
the prosecution of that suit and the recovery of a judgment? 
What is the protection that is thrown over this army of office- 
holders? Let it be explained. 

" It may be said that this is a part of the military dei^artment. 
That will depend not so much upon what we call them in the 
law as what are the duties imposed upon these sub-agents. It is 
a little difficult to tell. They are to protect the freedmen ; they 
are to protect refugees; they are to buy asylums and school- 
houses; they are to establish schools; they are to see to the con- 
tracts that are made between white men and colored men. I 



THE FREEDMEM. 113 

want to know of the cliairman of the committee that reported this 
bill, in what respect these duties are military in their character? 
I can understand one thing, that it may be regarded as a war 
upon the liberties of the people, but I am not able to sfee in what 
.respect the duties of these officers otherwise are military. But 
this protection is to be thrown over them. I will not occupy 
longer time upon that subject. 

" The third section of the bill changes the letter of the law in 
two respects : first, * That the Secretary of War may direct such 
issnes of provisions, clothing, fuel, and other supplies, including 
medical stores and transportation,' etc. Those last words, ' med- 
ical stores and transportation,' make the change in the law that 
is proposed in this bill. But, sir, in point of fact it makes no 
change in the law ; for if you will turn to the report of the com- 
missioner of this bureau, it will be found that the bureau, during 
the past six months, has been furnishing medical supplijes and 
transportation. A very large item in the expenditures estimated 
for is transportation. But I wish to ask of the Senator who 
framed this bill why we shall now provide for the transportation 
of freedmen and refugees. During the war, a very large number 
of refugees came from the Southern States into the North; but 
the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, in his report, says 
that those refugees have mainly retiu-ned, and but few remain 
now to be carried back from the North to the South, or who de- 
sire to be. Then why do we provide in this bill for transporta- 
tion? Is it simply to give the bureau the power to transport 
refugees and freedmen from one locality to another at its pleas- 
ure? The necessity of carrying them from one section of the 
country to another has passed away. Is it intended by this bill 
that the bureau shall expend the people's money in carrying the 
colored people from one locality in a Southern State to another 
locahty? I ask the Senator from Illinois, when he comes to ex- 
plain his bill, to tell us just what is the force and purpose of this 
provision. 

"The fourth resolution, as amended, provides for the setting 
apart of three million acres of the public lands in the States of 
Florida, ISIississippi, and Arkansas for homes for the colored 
people. I believe that is the only provision of the bill in which 
I concur. I concur in what was said by some Senator yesterday, 
that it is desirable, if we ever expect to do any thing substantially 
8 



114 THE THIRTY-MINTR CONGRESS. 

for the colored people, to encourage them to obtain homes, and I 
am Avilling to vote for a reasonable appropriation of the public 
lands for that purpose. I shall not, therefore, occupy time in dis- 
cussing that section. 

"The fifth section, as amended by the proposition before the 
Senate, proposes to confirm the possessory right of the colored 
people upon these lands for three years from the date of that 
order, or about two years from this time. I like the amendment 
better than the original bill; for the original bill left it entirely 
uncertain what was confirmed, and of course it is better that we 
should say one year, or three years, or ten years, than to leave it 
entirely indefinite for what period we do confirm the possession. 
I have no doubt that General Sherman had the power, as a mili- 
tary commander, at the time, to set apart the abandoned lands 
along the coast as a place in which to leave the colored people 
then surrounding his army ; but that General Sherman during the 
war, or that Congress after the w^ar, except by a proceeding for 
confiscation, can take the land permanently from one person and 
give it to another, I do not admit; nor did General Sherman 
undertake to do that. In express terms, he said that they should 
have the right of possession ; for what length of time he did not 
say, for the reason that he could not say. It was a military pos- 
session that he conferred, and that possession would last only dur- 
ing the continuance of the military occupation, and no longer. If 
General Sherman, by his General Order No. 15, placed the colored 
people upon the lands along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, 
and Florida, for a temporary j)urpose, what was the extent of the 
possessory right which he could confer ? He did not undertake to 
give a title for any defined period, but simply the right of posses- 
sion. It is fair to construe his order as meaning only what he 
could do, giving the right of possession during military occupancy. 
Now, sir, the President informs us that the rebellion is suppressed ; 
that the war is over ; that military law no longer governs in that 
country; but that peace is restored, and that civil law shall now 
govern. What, then, is the law upon the subject? A right of 
possession is given by the commanding general to certain persons 
within that region of country; peace follows, and with peace 
comes back the right of the real owners to the possessi(in. This 
possession that the General undertook to give, according to law, 
cpuld not last longer than the military occupancy. When peace 



THE FREEDMEM. 115 

comes, the right of tlie owners return with it. Then how is it 
that Congress can undertake to say that the property tliat belongs 
to A, R, and C, ujjon the islands and sea-coast of the South, shall, 
for two years from this date, not belong to them, but shall be- 
long to certain colored people? I want to know upon what 
principle of law Congress can take the property of one man and 
give it to another. 

"I know very well what may be done in the courts by a pro- 
ceeding for confiscation. I am not discussing that question. If 
there has been any property confiscated and disposed of under 
proceedings of confiscation, I do not question the title here. That 
is purely a judicial question. But, sir, I deny that Congress can 
legislate the property of one man into the possession of another. 
If this section is to pass, I prefer that this confirmation shall be 
for three years rather than leave it in the uncertain' state in which 
General Sherman's order left it. 

"The sixth section provides, ^That the commissioners shall, 
under the direction of the President, procure in the name of the 
United States, by grant or purchase, such lands within the 
districts aforesaid as may be required for refugees and freedmen 
dependent on the Government for support; and he shall provide, 
or cause to be erected, suitable buildings for asylums and schools.' 
Upon what principle can you authorize the Government of the 
United States to buy lands for the poor people in any State of 
the Union? They may be very meritorious; their cases may 
appeal with great force to our sympathies ; it may almost appear 
necessary to prevent suifering that we should buy a home for 
each poor person in the country; but where is the power of the 
General Government to do this thing? Is it true that by this 
revolution the persons and property of the people have been 
brought within the jurisdiction of Congress, and taken from 
without the control and jurisdiction of the States? I have under- 
stood heretofore that it has never been disputed that the duty to 
provide for the poor, the insane, the blind, and all who are de- 
pendent upon society, rests upon the States, and that the power 
does not belong to the General Government. What has occurred, 
then, in this war that has changed the relation of the people to 
the General Government to so great an extent that Congress may 
become the purchasers of homes for them ? If we can go so far, 
I know of no limit to the powers of Congress. Here is a propo- 



116 THE TtLIRTY-KIJ^TR COJ^GRESS. 

sition to buy a home for each dependent freeman and refuo-ee. 
The section is not quite as strong as it might have been. It 
would have been stronger, I think, in the present state of public 
sentiment, if the word ' refugee ' had been left out, and if it had 
been only for the freedmen, because it does not seem to be so jiop- 
ular now to buy a home for a white man as to buy one for a colored 
man. But this bill authorizes the officers of the Freedmen's 
Bureau to buy homes for white j^eople and for black people only 
upon the ground that they are dependent. If this be the law 
now, there has come about a startling change in the relation of 
the States and of the people to the General Government. I shall 
be very happy to hear from the learned head of the Judiciary 
Committee upon what principle it is that in any one single case 
you may buy a home for any man, whether he be rich or poor. 
The General Government may buy land Avhen it is necessary for 
the exercise of any of its powers ; but outside of that, it seems to 
me, there is no power within the Constitution allowing it. 

" The most remarkable sections of the bill, however, are the 
seventh and eighth, and to those sections I will ask the very 
careful attention of Senators ; for I think if we can pass those 
two sections, and make them a law, then indeed this Government 
can do any thing. It will be useless to speak any longer of 
limitations upon the powers of the General Government ; it will 
be idle to speak of the reserved power of the States ; State rights 
and State power will have passed away if we can do what is 
proposed in the seventh and eighth sections of this bill. We 
propose, first, to legislate against the effects of ^ local law, ordi- 
nance, police, or other regulation;' then against ^custom,' and 
lastly, against 'prejudice,' and to provide that 'if any of the civil 
rights or immunities belonging to white persons' are denied to 
any person because of color, then that person shall be taken un- 
der the military protection of the Government. I do not know 
whether that will be understood to extend to Indiana or not. 
That will be a very nice point for the bureau to decide, I pre- 
sume, after the enactment of the law. The section limits its 
operation to 'any State or district in which the ordinary course 
of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion.' It 
will 1)0 a little difficult to say whether in the State of Indiana 
and Ohio the ordinary course of judicial proceeding has or has 
not been interrupted. We had some war in Indiana; we had a 



THE FREEDMEJf. 117 

very great raid through that State and some fighting; and I 
presume that in some cases the proceedings of the courts were 
interrupted and the courts were unable to go on with their busi- 
ness, so that it might be said that even in some of the Northern 
States this provision of the bill would be applicable. Suppose 
that it were applicable to the State of Indiana, then every man in 
that State, who attempted to execute the constitution and laws 
of the State, would be liable for a violation of the law. We do 
not allow to colored people there many civil rights and immuni- 
ties which are enjoyed by the white people. It became the policy 
of the State in 1852 to prohibit the immigration of colored people 
into that State. I am not going to discuss the question whether 
that was a wise policy or not. At the time it received the ap- 
proval of my judgment. Under that constitutional provision, 
and the laws enacted in pursuance of it, a colored man coming 
into the State since 1852 can not acquire a title to real estate, 
can not make certain contracts, and no negro man is allowed to 
intermarry with a white woman. These are civil rights that are 
denied, and yet this bill proposes, if they are still denied in any 
State whose courts have been interrupted by the rebellion, the 
military protection of the Government shall be extended over 
the person who Is thus denied such civil rights or immunities. 

" The next section of the bill provides punishments where any 
of these things are done, where any right is denied to a colored 
man which under State law is allowed to a white man. The 
language is very vague, and it is very difficult to say what this 
section will mean. If it has as broad a construction as is at- 
tempted to be given to the second section of the constitutional 
amendment, I would not undertake to guess what it means. 
Any man who shall deny to any colored man any civil rights 
secured to white persons, shall be liable to be taken before the 
officers of this bureau and to be punished according to the pro- 
visions of this section. In the first place, now that peace is 
restored, now that there is no war, now that men are no longer 
under military rule, but are under civil rule, I want to know 
how such a court can be organized ; how it is that the citizen 
may be arrested without indictment, and may be brought before 
the officers of this bureau and tried without a jury, tried with- 
out the forms which the Constitution requires. 

"But sir, this section is most objectionable in regard to the 



118 THE THIBTY-JfljYTH COJYGBESS. 

offense that it defines. If any portion of the law ought to be 
certain, it is that -which defines crime and prescribes the punish- 
ment. AVliat is meant by this general expression, ^the depriva- 
tion of any civil right secured to white persons ? ' The agent in 
one State may construe it to mean one thing, and the agent in 
another State another thing. It is broad and comprehensive — 
'the deprivation of any civil right secured to white persons.' 
That act of deprivation is the crime that is to be punished. Take 
tie case that I have just referred to; Suppose a minister, when 
called upon, should refuse to solemnize a marriage between a 
colored man and a white woman because the law of the State 
forbade it, would he then, refusing to recognize a civil right 
which is enjoyed by white persons, be liable to this punisment? 

"My judgment is that, under the second section of the consti- 
tutional amendment, we may pass such a law as will secure the 
freedom declared in the first section, but that we can not go be- 
yond that limitation. If a man has been, by this provision of 
the Constitution, made free from his master, and that master 
undertakes to make him a slave again, we may pass such laws 
as are sufficient in our judgment to prevent that act ; but if the 
Legislature of the State denies to the citizen as he is now called, 
the freedman, equal privileges with the white man, I want to 
know if that Legislature, and each member of that Legislature, is 
responsible to the |)eualties prescribed* in this bill? It is not an 
act of the old master ; it is an act of the State government, which 
defines and regulates the civil rights of the people. 

"I regard it as very dangerous legislation. It proposes to 
establish a government within a government — not a republic 
within a republic, but a cruel despotism within a republic. In 
times of peace, in communities that are quiet and orderly, and 
obedient to law, it is proposed to establish a government not 
responsible to the jieople, the officers of which are not selected 
by the peojjle, the officers of which need not be of the people 
governed — a government more cruel, more despotic, more danger- 
ous to the liberties of the people than that against which our 
forefathers fought in the Revolution. There is nothing that these 
men may not do,. under this bill, to oi)press the people. 

" Sir, if we establish courts in the Southern States, we ought 
to establish courts that will be on both sides, or on neither side; 
but the doctrine now is, that if a man is appointed, either to an 



THE FliEEDMEK. 119 

executive or a judicial office, in any locality wliere tliere arc 
colored people, he must be on the side of the negro. I have not 
heard, since Congress met, that any colored man has done a 
wrong in this country for many years ; and I have scarcely heard 
that any Avliite man coming in contact with colored people has 
done right for a number of years. Every body is expected to 
take sides for the colored man against the white man. If I have 
to take sides, it will be with the men of my own color and my 
own race; but I do not wish to do that. Toward these people 
I hope that the legislation of Congress, within the constitutional 
powers of Congress, will be just and fair — just to them and just 
to the white people among whom they live ; that it will promote 
harmony among the people, and not discord ; that it will restore 
labor to its channels, and bring about again in those States a 
condition of prosperity and happiness. Do we not all desire 
that ? If we do, is it well for us to inflame our passions and the 
passions of the people of the North, so that their judgments shall 
not be equal upon the questions between these races? It is all 
very well for us to have symj)athy for the poor and the unfor- 
tunate, but both sides call for our sympathy in the South. The 
master, who, by his wickedness and folly, has involved himself 
in the troubles that now beset him, has returned, abandoning his 
rebellion, and has bent down upon his humble knees and asked 
the forgiveness of the Government, and to be restored again as 
a citizen. Can a man go further than that? He has been in 
many cases pardoned by the Executive. He stands again as a 
citizen of the country. 

"Wliat relation do we desire that the people of the North 
shall sustain toward these people of the South — one of harmony 
and accord, or of strife and ill will? Do we want to restore 
commerce and trade with them, that we shall prosper thereby as 
well as they, or do we wish j)ermanent strife and division ? I 
want this to be a Union in form, under the Constitution of the 
United States, and, in fact, by the harmony of the people of 
the North and of the South. I believe, as General Grant says, 
that this bureau, especially with the enlarged powers that we 
propose to confer u2:)on it, will not be an instrument of concord 
and harmony, but will be one of discord and strife in that sec- 
tion of the country. It can not do good, but, in my judgment, 
will do much harm." 



120 TEE THIRTY-JVIJfTH COJVGBESS. 

Following immediately upon the close of the above argument, 
INIr. Trumbull thus addressed the senate : " INIr. President, I feel 
it incumbent on me to reply to some of the arguments presented 
by the Senator from Indiana against this bill. Many of the 
positions he has assumed will be found, upon examination, to 
have no foundation in fact. He has argued against provisions 
not contained in the bill, and he has argued also as if he were 
entirely forgetful of the condition of the country and of the 
great war through which we have passed. 

"Now, sir, what was the object of the Freedmen's Bureau, and 
why was it established? It was established to look after a large 
class of peojjle wdio, as the results of the war, had been thrown 
upon the hands of the Government, and must have perished but 
for its fostering care and protection. Does the Senator mean to 
deny the power of this Government to protect people under such 
circumstances ? The Senator must often have voted for appropri- 
ations to protect other classes of j)eople under like circumstances 
Whenever, in the history of the Government, there has beer, 
thrown upon it a helpless population, which must starve and die 
but for its' care, the Government has never foiled to provide for 
them. At this very session, within the last thirty days, both 
houses of Congress have voted half a million dollars to feed and 
clothe people during the present winter. Who were they ? Many 
of them were Indians wdio had joined the rebellion, and had slain 
loyal people of the country. Yes, sir, we appropriated money to 
feed Indians who had been fighting against us. We did not hear 
the Senator's voice in opposition to that appropriation. , What 
were the facts? It was Itated by our Indian agents that the In- 
dian tribes west of Arkansas, a part of whom had joined the rebel 
armies and some the Union armies, had been driven from their 
country; that their property had been destroyed; and now, the 
conflict of arms having ceased, they had nothing to live upon dur- 
ing the winter ; that they would encroach upon the white settle- 
ments ; that unless provision w\as made for them, they would rob, 
plunder, and murder the inhabitants nearest them ; and Congress 
was called upon to appropriate money to buy them food and 
clothing, and we did it. We did it for rebels and traitors. Were 
we not bound to do it ? 

Now, sir, we have thrown upon us four million people who 
have toiled all their lives for others; who, unlike the Indians, 



THE FBEEDMEM. 121 

had no property at the beginning of the rebellion; who were 
never permitted to own any thing, never permitted to eat the 
bread their own hands had earned ; many of whom are without 
support, in the midst of a prejudiced and hostile population who 
have been struggling to overthrow the Government. These four 
million people, made free by the acts of war and the constitu- 
tional amendment, have been, wherever they could, loyal and 
true to the Union ; and the Senator seriously asks, What author- 
ity have we to appropriate money to take care of them? What 
would he do with them? Would he allow them to starve and 
die? AVould he turn them over to the mercy of the men who, 
through their whole lives, have had their earnings, to be en- 
slaved again ? It is not the first time that money has been appro^ 
priated to take care of the destitute and suffering African.' For 
years it has been 4\\q. law that whenever persons of African de- 
scent were brought to oar shores with the intention of reducing 
them to slavery, the Government should, if possible, rescue and 
restore them to their native land ; and we have ai)j)roiiriated hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars for this object. Can any body deny 
the right to do it? Sir, humanity as well as the constitutional 
obligation to suppress the slave trade required it. 'So now the 
people relieved by our act from the control of masters who sup- 
plied their wants that they might have their services, have a right 
to rely ujDon us for assistance till they can have time to provide 
for themselves. 

"This Freedmen's Bureau is not intended as a permanent in- 
stitution; it is only designed to aid these helpless, ignorant, and 
unpro.tected people until they can provide for and take care of 
themselves. The authority to do this, so far as legislative sanc- 
tion can give it, is to be found in the action of a previous Congress 
which established the bureau ; but, if it were a new question, the 
authority for establishing such a bureau, in my judgment, is given 
by the Constitution itself; and as the Senator's whole argument 
goes upon the idea of peace, and that all the consequences of the 
war have ceased, I shall be pardoned, I trust, if I refer to those 
provisions of the Constitution which, in my judgment, authorize 
the exercise of this militaiy jurisdiction ; for this bureau is a part 
of the military establishment not simply during the conflict of 
arms, but until peace shall be firmly established and the civil tri- 



122 THE TUIRTT-jYIJs'TH coj^gbess. 

bunal.s of the countiy shall be restored with an assurance that they 
may peacefully enforce the laws without opposition. 

"The Constitution of the United States declares that Congress 
shall have authority 'to declare war and make rules concerning 
captures on land and water/ 'to raise and support armies/ Ho 
provide and • maintain a navy/ ' to make rules for the govern- 
ment and regulation of the land and naval forces/ 'to provide 
for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, 
suppress insurrection, and repel invasion/ and 'to make all laws 
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution 
the foregoing powers.' It also declares that ' the citizens of each 
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of 
citizens in the several States/ and that 'the United States shall 
guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of gov- 
ernment.' Under the exercise of these jjowers, the Government 
has gone through a four years' conflict. It has succeeded in put- 
ting down armed resistance to its authorit}'. But did the mili- 
tary power which was exercised to put down this armed resistance 
cease the moment the rebel armies were dispersed? Has the 
Government no authority to bring to punishment the authors 
of this rebellion after the conflict of arms has ceased ? no author- 
ity to hold as prisoners, if necessary, all who have been captured 
with arms in theu' hands? Can it be that, the moment the rebel 
armies are dispersed, the military authority ceases, and they are 
to be turned loose to arm and organize again for another conflict 
against the Union?. Why, sir, it would not be more preposterous 
on the part of the traveler, after having, at the peril of his life, 
succeeded in disarming a highwayman by whom he was assailed, 
to immediately turn round and restore to the robber his weapons 
with which to make a new assault. 

" And yet this is what some gentlemen would have this nation 
do witli the worse than robbers who have assailed its life. They 
propose, the rebel armies being overcome, that the rebels them- 
selves shall be instantly clothed with all the authority they pos- 
sessed before the conflict, and that the inhabitants of States who 
for more than four years have carried on an organized war against 
the Government shall at once be invested with all the powers they 
had at its commencement to organize and begin it anew; nay, 
more, they insist that, without any action of the Government, it 
is the right of the inhabitants of the rebellious States, on laying 



THE FEEEDMEK. 123 

down their arms, to resume their former positions in the Union, 
with all the rights they possessed when they began the war. If 
such are the consequences of this struggle, it is the first conflict 
in the history of the world,, between either individuals or nations, 
from which such results have followed. What man, after being 
despoiled of nuich of his substance, his children slain, his own life 
periled, and his body bleeding from many wounds, ever restored 
the authors of such calamities, when within his power, to the 
rights they possessed before the conflict without taking some se- 
curity for the future. 

" Sir, the war powers of the Government do not cease with the 
disjiersion of the rebel armies; they are to be continued and 
exercised until the civil authority of the Government can be es- 
tablished firmly and upon a sure foundation, not again to be dis- 
turbed or interfered Avith. And such, sir, is the understanding 
of the Government. None of the departments of the Govern- 
ment understand that its military authority has ceased to operate 
over the rebellious States. It is but a short time since the Pres- 
ident of the United States issued a proclamation restoring the 
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the loyal States ; but 
did he restore it in the rebellious States? Certainly not. What 
authority has he to suspend the privilege of that writ anywhere, 
except in pursuance of the constitutional provision allowing the 
writ to be suspended ' when in cases of rebellion or invasion the 
public safety may require it?' Then the President understands 
that the public safety in the insurrectionary States still requires 
its suspension. 

" The Attorney-General, when asked, a few days ago, why Jef- 
ferson Davis was not put upon trial, told you that, though act- 
ive hostilities have ceased, a state of war still exists over the 
territory in rebellion,' so that it could not be properly done. 
General Grant, in an order issued within a few days — which I 
commend to the especial consideration of the Senator from Indi- 
ana, for it contains many of the provisions of the bill under 
consideration — an order issued with the approbation of the Ex- 
ecutive, for such an order, I apprehend, could not have been 
issued without his approbation — directs 'military division and 
department gommanders, whose commands embrace or are com- 
posed of any of the late rebellious States, and who have not 
already done so, will at once issue and enforce orders protecting 



124 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJfGEESS. 

from prosecution or suits in the State, or municipal courts of 
such State, all officers and soldiers of the armies of the United 
States, and all persons thereto attached, or in anywise thereto 
belonging, subject to military authority, charged with offenses 
for acts done in their military capacity, or pursuant to orders 
from proper military authority; and to protect from suit or 
prosecution all loyal citizens or persons charged with offenses 
done against the rebel forces, directly or indirectly, during the 
existence of the rebellion ; and all persons, their agents and em- 
ployes, charged with the occupancy of abandoned lands or plan- 
tations, or the possession or custody of any kind of property 
whatever, who occupied, used, possessed, or controlled the same, 
pursuant to the order of the President, or any of the civil or 
military dejjartments of the Government, and to protect them 
from any penalties or damages that may have been or may be 
pronounced or adjudged in said courts in any of such cases ; and 
also protecting colored persons from prosecutions, in any of said 
States, charged wdth offenses for which white persons are not 
prosecuted or pimished in the same manner and degree.' " 

Mr. Saulsbury having asked whether the Senator believed that 
General Grant or the President had any constitutional authority 
to make such an order as that, Mr. Trumbull replied : " I am 
veiy glad the Senator from Delaware has asked the question. I 
answer, he had most ample and complete authority. I indorse 
the order and every word of it. It would be monstrous if the 
officers and soldiers of the army and loyal citizens were to be 
subjected to suits and prosecutions for acts done in saving the 
republic, and that, too, at the hands of the very men who sought 
its destruction. Why, had not the Lieutenant-General author- 
ity to issue the order? Have not the civil tribunals in all 
the region of country to which order applies been expelled by 
armed rebels and traitors? Has not the power of the Govern- 
ment been overthrown there? Is it yet reestablished? Some 
steps have been taken toward reestablishing it under the author- 
ity of the military, and in no other way. If any of the State 
governments recently set up in the rebellious States were to un- 
dertake to embarrass military operations, I have no doubt they 
would at once be set aside by order of the Lieutenant-General, 
in pursuance of directions from the Executive. These govern- 
ments which have been set up act by permission of the mili- 



THE FBEEDMEJ^. 125 

tary. They are made use of, to some extent, to preserve peace 
and order and enforce civil rights between parties; and, so far 
as they act in harmony with the Constitution and laws of the 
United States and the orders of tlie military commanders, they 
are permitted to exercise authority; but until those States shall 
be restored in all their constitutional relations to the Union, 
they ought not to be permitted to exercise authority in any other 
way. 

" I desire the Senator from Indiana to understand that it is un- 
der this war power that the authority of the Freedmen's Bureau 
is to be exercised. I do not claim that its officers can try persons 
for oifenses without juries in States where the civil tribunals have 
not been interrupted by the rebellion. The Senator from Indiana 
argues against this bill as if it was applicable to that State. Some 
of its provisions are, but most of them are not, unless the State 
of Indiana has been in rebellion against the Government; and I 
know too many of the brave men who have gone from that State 
to mantain the integrity of the Union and ^ni down the rebellion 
to cast any such imputation upon her. She is a loyal and a patri- 
otic State; her civil government has never been usurped or over- 
thrown by trators, and the provisions of the seventh and eighth 
sections of the bill to which the Senator alludes can not, by their 
very terms, have any application to the State of Indiana. Let me 
read the concluding sentence of the eighth section : 

" 'The jurisdiction conferred by this section on the officers and agents of 
this bureau to cease and determine whenever the discrimination on account 
of which it is conferred ceases, and in no event to be exercised in any State 
in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has not been inter- 
rupted by the rebellion, nor in any such State after said State shall have 
been fully restored in all its constitutional relations to the United States, and 
the courts of the State and of the United States within the same are not dis- 
turbed or stopped in the peaceable course of justice.' 

"Will the Senator from Indiana admit for a moment that the 
courts in his State are now disturbed or stopped in the peaceable 
course of justice ? If they were ever so disturbed, they are not 
now. Will the Senator admit that the State of Indiana docs not 
have and exercise all its constitutional rights as one of the States 
of this Union? The judicial authority conferred by this bill ap- 
plies to no State, not even to South Carolina, after it shall have 
been restored in all its constitutional rights. 



126 THE THIRTY-KIJ^TR COJ^GRESS. 

"There is no provision in the bill for the exercise of judicial 
authority excej^t in the eighth section. Rights are declared in 
the seventh, but the mode of protecting them is provided in the 
eighth section, and the eighth section then declares explicitly that 
the jurisdiction that is conferred shall be exercised only in States 
which do not possess full constitutional rights as parts of the 
Union. Indiana has at all times had all the constitutional rights 
pertaining to any State, has them now, and therefore the officers 
and agents of this bureau can take no jurisdiction of any case in 
the State of Indiana. It will be another question, which I will 
answer, and may as well answer now, perhaps, as to what is meant 
by [ military protection.' 

■ " The second section declares that ' the President of the United 
States, through the War Department and the commissioner, shall 
extend military jurisdiction and protection over all employes, 
agents, and officers of this bureau.' He wants to know the effect 
of that in Indiana. This bureau is a part of the military estab- 
lishment. The effect of that in Indiana is precisely the same as 
in every other State, and under it the officers and agents of the 
Freedmen's Bureau will occupy the same position as do the offi- 
cers and soldiers of the United States Army. What is that? 
While they are subject to the Rules and Articles of War, if they 
chance to be in Indiana and violate her laws, they are held amen- 
able the same as any other person. The officer or soldier in the 
State of Indiana who commits a murder or other offense upon a 
citizen of Indiana, is liable to be indicted, tried, and punished, 
just as if he were a civilian. When the sheriff goes wdth the 
process to arrest the soldier or officer who has committed the of- 
fense, the military authorities surrender him up to be tried and 
punished according to the laws of the State. It has always been 
done, unless in time of war when the courts were interrupted. 
The jurisdiction and 'protection' that is extended over these offi- 
cers and agents is for the purpose of making them subject to the 
Rules and Articles of War. It is necessary for this reason: in 
the rebellious States civil authority is not yet fully restored. 
There would be no other w^ay of punishing them, of holding them 
to accountability, of governing and controlling them, in many 
portions of the country ; and it is because of the condition of the 
rebellious States, and their still being under military authority, 



THE FEEEBMEK. 127 

that it is necessary to put these officers and agents of the Frced- 
men^s Bureau under the control of the military power. 

" The Senator says the original law only embraced within its 
provisions the refugees in the rel)olHous States; and now this bill 
is extended to all the States, and he wants to know the reason. I 
will tell him. When the original bill was passed, slavery existed 
in Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, and in various other States. 
Since that time, by the constitutional amendment, it has been 
every-where abolished." 

Mr. Saulsbury, aroused by the mention of his own State, inter- 
rupted the speaker : " I say, as one of the representatives of Dela- 
ware on this floor, that she had the proud and noble character of 
being the first to enter the Federal Union under a Constitution 
formed by equals. She has been the very last to obey a mandate, * 
legislative or executive, for abolishing slavery. She has been the 
last slaveholding State, thank God, in America, and I am one of 
the last slaveholders in America." 

Mr. Trumbull continued : " Well, Mr. President, I do not see 
particularly what the declaration of the Senator from Delaware 
has to do with the question I am discussing. His State may 
have been the last to become free, but I presume that the State 
of Delaware, old as she is, being the first to adojit the Constitu- 
tion, and noble as she is, will submit to the Constitution of the 
United States, which declares that there shall be no slavery within 
its jurisdiction." [Applause in the galleries.] 

"It is necessary, Mr. President, to extend the Freedmen's 
Bureau beyond the rebel States in order to take in the State of 
Delaware, [laughter,] the loyal State of Delaware, I am happy 
to say, which did not engage in this Avicked rebellion; and it is 
necessary to protect the freedmen in that State as well as else- 
where; and that is the reason for extending the Freedmen's 
Bureau beyond the limits of the rebellious States. 

"Now, the Senator from Indiana says it extends all over the 
United States. Well, by its terms it does, though practically it 
can have little if any operation outside of the late slaveholding 
States. If freedmen should congregate in large numbers at Cairo, 
Illinois, or at Evausville, Indiana, and become a charge upon the 
j^eople of those States, the Freedmen's Bureau would have a right 
to extend its jurisdiction over them, provide for their wants, secure 
for them employment, and place them in situations where they 



128 THE TIURTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

could provide for themselves ; and would the State of Illinois or 
the State of Indiana object to that ? The provisions of the bill 
which would interfere with the laws of Indiana can have no oper- 
ation there. 

"Again, the Senator objects very much to the expense of this 
bureau. AVhy, sir, as I have once or twice before said, it is a 
part of the military establishment. I believe nearly all its officers 
at the present time are military officers, and by the provisions of 
the pending bill they are to receive no additional compensation 
when performing duties in the Freedmen's Bureau. The bill 
declares that the ' bureau may, in the discretion of the President, 
be placed under a commissioner and assistant commissioners, to 
be detailed from the army, in which event each officer so assigned 
to duty shall serve without increase of pay or allowances.' 

" I shall necessarily, Mr. President, in following the Senator 
from Indiana, speak somewhat in a desultory manner; but I 
prefer to do so because I would rather meet the objections made 
directly than by any general speech. I will, therefore, take up 
his next objection, which is to the fifth section of the bill. That 
section proposes to confirm for three years the possessory titles 
granted by General Sherman. The Senator from Indiana admits 
that General Sherman had authority, when at the head of the 
army at Savannah, and these people were flocking around him 
and dependent upon him for support, to put them upon the aban- 
doned lands ; but he says that authority to put them there and 
maintain them there ceased with peace. Well, sir, a sufficient 
answer to that would be that peace has not yet come; the effects 
of war are not yet ended ; the people of the States of South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, and Florida, where these lands are situated, are yet 
subject to military control. But I deny that if peace had come the 
authority of the Government to protect these people in their posses- 
sions would cease the moment it was declared. What are the facts ? 
The owners of these plantations had abandoned them and entered 
the rebel army. They were contending against the army which 
General Sherman then commanded. Numerous colored people 
had flocked around General Sherman's army. It was necessary 
that he should supply them to save them from starvation. His 
commissariat was short. Here was this abandoned country, owned 
by men arrayed in arms against the Government. He, it is 
admitted, had authority to put these followers of his army upon 



THE FEEEDMEK. 129 

these lands, and authorize them to go to work and gain a subsist- 
ence if they could. They Avent on the lands to the number of 
forty or fifty thousand, commenced work, have made imj)rove- 
ments ; and now will the Senator from Indiana tell me that upon 
any principle of justice, humanity, or law, if peace had come 
when these laborers had a crop half gathered, the Government 
of the United States, having rightfully placed them in posses- 
sion, and pledged its faith to protect them there for an uncertain 
period, could immediately have turned them off and put in pos- 
session those traitor owners who had abandoned their homes to 
fight against the Government? 

"The Government having placed these people rightfully upon 
these lands, and they having expended their labor upon them, 
they had a right to be protected in their possessions, for some 
length of time after peace, on the principle of equity. That is all 
we propose to do by this bill. The committee thought it would 
not be more than a reasonable protection to allow them to remain 
for three years, they having been put upon these lands destitute, 
without any implements of husbandry, without cattle, horses, or 
any thing else with which to cultivate the land, and having, up 
to the present time, been able to raise very little at the expense 
of great labor. Perhaps the Senator thinks they ought not to 
remain so long. I will not dispute whether they shall go off at 
the end of one year or two years. The committee propose two 
years more. The order was dated in January, 1865, and we pro- 
pose three years from that time, which will expire in January, 
1868, or about two years from this time. 

" On account of that provision of the bill, the Senator asks me 
the question whether the Government of the United States has 
the right, in a time of peace, to take property from one man and 
give it to another. I say no. Of course the Government of the 
United States has no authority, in a time of peace, by a legis- 
lative act, to say that the farm of the Senator from Indiana shall 
be given to the Senator from Ohio; I contend for no such prin- 
ciple. But following that up, the Senator wants to know by 
what authority you buy land or provide school-houses for these 
refugees. Have we not been providing school-houses for years? 
Is there a session of Congress when acts are not passed giving 
away public lands for the benefit of schools ? But that does not 
come out of the Treasury, the Senator from Indiana will prob- 
9 



130 THE THIBTT-jrijYTH COJ^GBESS. 

ably answer. But how did you get the land to give away ? Did 
you not buy it of the Indians ? Are you not appropriating, every 
session of Congress, money by the million to extinguish the Indian 
title — money collected off his constituents and mine by taxation? 
AYe buy the land and then we give the land away for schools. 
Will the Senator tell me how that diifcrs from giving the money ? 
Docs it make any difference whether we buy the land from the 
Indians and give it for the benefit of schools, or whether we buy 
it from some rebel and give — no, sir, use — it for the benefit of 
schools, with a view ultimately of selling it for at least its cost? 
I believe I would rather buy from the Indian; but still, if the 
traitor is to be permitted to have a title, we will buy it from him 
if we can purchase cheaper. 

" Sir, it is a matter of economy to do this. The cheapest way 
by which you can save this race from starvation and destruction 
is to educate them. They will then soon become self-sustaining. 
The report of the Freedmen's Bureau .shows that to-day more 
than seventy thousand black children are being taught in the 
schools which have been established in the South. We shall not 
long have to support any of these blacks out of the public Treas- 
ury if we educate and furnish them land upon which they can 
make a living for themselves. This is a very different thing 
from taking the land of A and giving it to B by an act of Con- 
gress. 

" But the Senator is most alarmed at those sections of this bill 
which confer judicial authority upon the officers and agents of 
the Freedmen's Bureau. He says if this authority can be exer- 
cised there is an end to all the reserved rights of the States, and 
this Government may do any thing. Xot at all, sir. The author- 
ity, as I have already shown, to be exercised under the seventh 
and eighth sections, is a military authority, to be exerted only in 
regions of country where the civil tribunals are overthrown, and 
not there after they are restored. It is the same authority that 
we have been exercising all the time in the rebellious States ; it 
is the same authority by virtue of which General Grant issued 
the order which I have just read. Here is a perfect and complete 
answer to the objection that is made to the seventh and eighth 
sections. 

" But, says the Senator from Indiana, we have laws in Indiana 
prohibiting black people from marrying whites, and are you gouig 



THE FBEEDMEJi. 131 

to disregard these laws ? Are our laws enacted for tlie purpose 
of preventing amalgamation to be disregarded, and is a man to 
be punished because he undertakes to enforce them? I beg the 
Senator from Indiana to read the bill. One of its objects is to 
secure the same civil rights and subject to the same punishments 
persons of all races and colors. How does this interfere with the 
law of Indiana preventing marriages between w^iites and blacks? 
Are not both races treated alike by the law of Indiana? Does 
not the law make it just as much a crime for a white man to 
marry a black w^oman as for a black woman to marry a white 
man, and vice versa'? I presume there is no discrimination in 
this respect, and therefore your law forbidding marriages between 
whites and blacks operates alike on both races. This bill does 
not interfere with it. If the negro is denied the right to marry 
a white person, the white person is equally denied the right to 
marry the negro. I see no discrimination against either in this 
respect that does not apply to both. Make the penalty the same 
on all classes of people for the same offense, and then no one can 
complain. 

" My object in bringing forward these bills was to bring to the 
attention of Congress something that was practical, something 
upon which I hoped we all could agree. I have said nothing in 
these bills which are pending, and which have been recommended 
by the Committee on the Judiciary — and I speak of both of them 
because they have both been alluded to in this discussion — about 
the political rights of the negro. On that subject it is known 
that there are differences of opinion, but I trust there are no 
differences of opinion among the friends of the constitutional 
amendment, among those who are for real freedom to the black 
man, as to his being entitled to equality in civil rights. If that 
is not going as far as some gentlemen would desire, I say to them 
it is a step in the right direction. Let us go that far, and, going 
that far, we have the cooperation of the Executive Department ; 
for the President has told us 'Good faith requires the security 
of the freedmen in their liberty and their property, their right to 
labor, and their right to claim the just return of their labor.' 

"Such, sir, is the language of the President of the United 
States in his annual message ; and who in this chamber that is 
in favor of the freedom of the slave is not in favor of giving him 
equal and exact justice before the law? Sir, we can go along 



132 THE THIRTT-MIjYTH C0:N'GEESS. 

baud in hand together to the consummation of this great object 
of securing to every human being within the jurisdiction of the 
republic equal rights before the law, and I preferred to seek 
for points of agreement between all the departments of Govern- 
ment, rather than to hunt for points of divergence. I have not 
said any thing in my remarks about reconstruction. I have not 
attempted to discuss the question whether these States are in the 
Union or out of the Union, and so much has been said upon that 
subject that I am almost ready to exclaim with one of old, ' I 
know not whether they are in the body or out of the body ; God 
knoweth.' It is enough for me to know that the State organiza- 
tions in several States of the Union have been usurped and over- 
thrown, and that up to the present time no State organization 
has been inaugurated in either of them which the various depart- 
ments of Government, or any dejDartment of the Government, has 
recognized as placing the States in full possession of all the con- 
stitutional rights pertaining to States in full communion with the 
Union. 

"The Executive has not recognized any one, for he still con- 
tinues to exercise military jurisdiction and to suspend the privilege 
of the writ of habeas corpus in all of them. Congress has not 
recognized any of them, as we all know ; and until Congress and 
the Executive do recognize them, let us make use of the Freed- 
men's Bureau, already established, to protect the colored race in 
their rights ; and when these States shalb be admitted, and the 
authority of the Freedmen's Bureau as a court shall cease and de- 
termine, as it must when civil authority is fully restored, let us 
provide, then, by other laws, for protecting all people in their equal 
civil rights before the law. If we can pass such measures, they 
receive executive sanction, and it shall be understood that it is the 
policy of the Government that the rights of the colored men are 
to be protected by the States if they will, but by the Federal Gov- 
ernment if they will not ; that at all hazards, and under all cir- 
cumstances, there shall be impartiality among all classes in civil 
rights throughout the land. If we can do this, much of the ap- 
prehension and anxiety now existing in the loyal States will be 
allayed, and a great obstacle to an early restoration of the insur- 
gent States to their constitutional relations in the Union will be 
removed. 

" If the people in the rebellious States can be made to under- 



THE FREEDMEM. 133 

stand that it Is the fixed and determined policy of the Government 
that the colored people shall be protected in their civil rights, they 
themselves will adopt the necessary measures to protect them ; and 
that will dispense with the Freedmen's Bureau and all other Fed- 
eral legislation for their protection. The design of these- bills is 
not, as the Senator from Indiana would have us believe, to consol- 
idate all power in the Federal Government, or to interfere with 
the domestic regulations of any of the States, except so far as to 
carry out a constitutional jjrovision which is the supreme law of 
the land. If the States will not do it, then it is incumbent on 
Congress to do it. But if the States will do it, then the Freed- 
men's Bureau will be removed, and the authority proposed to be 
given by the other bill will have no operation. 

"Sir, I trust there may be no occasion long to exercise the 
authority conferred by this bill. I hope that the people of the 
rebellious States themselves will conform to the existing condition 
of things. I do not expect them to change all their opinions and 
prejudices. I do not expect them to rejoice that they have been 
discomfited. . But they acknowledge that the war is over; they 
agree that they can no longer contend in arms against the Gov- 
ernment ; they say they are willing to submit to its authority ; 
they say in their State conventions that slavery shall no more 
exist among them. "With the abolition of slavery should go all 
the badges of servitude which have been enacted for its mainten- 
ance and support. Let them all be abolished. Let the people 
of the rebellious States now be as zealous and as active in the 
passage of laws and the inauguration of measures to elevate, de- 
velop, and improve the negro as they have hitherto been to en- 
slave and degrade him. Let them do justice and deal fairly with 
loyal Union men in their midst, and henceforth be themselves 
loyal, and this Congress will not have adjourned till the States 
whose inhabitants have been engaged in the rebellion will be re- 
stored to their former position in the Union, and we shall all be 
moving on in harmony together." 

On the day following the discussion above given, Mr. Cowan 
moved to amend the first section of the bill so that its operation 
would be limited to such States " as have lately been in rebellion." 
In supporting his amendment, Mr. Cowan remarked : " I have no 
idea of having this system extended over Pennsylvania. I think 
that as to the freedmen who make their appearance there, she will 



134 THE TEIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJVGHESS. 

be able to take care of them and jirovide as well for them as any 
bureau which can be created here. I wish to confine the opera- 
tion of this institution to the States which have been lately in 
rebellion." 

To this Mr. Trumbull replied : " The Senator from Pennsyl- 
vania will see that the effect of that would be to exclude from 
the operation of the bureau the State of Kentucky and the State 
of Delaware, where the slaves have been emancipated by the con- 
stitutional amendment. The operation of the bureau will un- 
doubtedly be chiefly confined to the States where slavery existed ; 
but it is a fact which may not be known to the Senator from Penn- 
sylvania, that during this war large numbers of slaves have fled 
to the Northern States bordering on the slaveholding territory. 

"It is not supposed that the bill will have any eiFect in the 
State of Pennsylvania or in the State of Illinois, unless it might, 
perhaps, be at Cairo, where there has been a large number of these 
refugees congregated, without any means of support; they fol- 
lowed the army there at diiFerent times. 

" The provision of the bill in regard to holding courts, and 
some other provisions, are confined entirely to the rebellious States, 
and will have no operation in any State which was not in insur- 
rection against this Government. I make this explanation to the 
Senator from Pennsylvania, and I think he will see the necessity 
of the bureau going into Kentucky and some of the other States, 
as much as into any of the Southern rebellious States." 

Mr. Guthrie was opposed to the extension of the bill to his 
State. He said: "I should like to know the j)eculiar reasons 
why this bill is to be extended to the State of Kentucky. She has 
never been in rebellion. Though she has been overrun by rebel 
armies, and her fields laid waste, she has always had her full quota 
in the Union armies, and the blood of her sons has marked the 
fields whereon they have fought. Kentucky does not want and 
does not ask this relief. The freedmen in Kentucky are a part 
of our population ; and where the old, and lame, and halt, and 
blind, and infants require care and attention they obtain it from 
the counties. Our whole organization for the support of the 
poor, through the agencies of the magistrates in the several coun- 
ties, is complete." 

On the other hand, IVIr. Crcswell, of Maryland, saw a necessity 
for the operation of the bill in his State. He said : " I have re- 




'•8-i;rA.H.Ritctae 



^y^^' 



TEE FBEEDMEJf. 135 

ceived, within the last two or three weeks, letters from gentlemen 
of the highest respectability in my State, asserting that combina- 
tions of rcturnctl rebel soldiers have been formed for the express 
pnrpose of persecuting, beating most cruelly, and in some cases 
actually murdering the returned colored soldiers of the republic. 
In certain sections of my State, the civil law affords no remedy 
at all. It is impossible there to enforce against these people so 
violating the law the penalties which the law has prescribed for 
these offenses. It is, therefore, necessary, in my opinion, that 
this bill shall extend over the State of Maryland." 

Mr. Cowan, in the course of a speech on the bill, said : " Thank 
God ! we are now rid of slavery ; that is now gone." He also 
said : " Let the friends of the negro, and I am one, be satisfied 
to treat him as he is treated in Pennsylvania; as he is treated in 
Ohio ; as he is treated every-where where people have maintained 
their sanity upon the question." 

Mr. Wilson said: "The Senator from Pennsylvania tells us 
that he is the friend of the negro. What, sii*, he the friend of 
the negro ! Why, sir, there has hardly been a proposition before 
the Senate of the United States for the last five years, looking to 
the emancipation of the negro and the protection of his rights, 
that the Senator from Pennsylvania has not sturdily .ojsposed. 
He has hardly ever uttered a word upon this floor the tendency 
of which was not to degrade and to belittle a weak and struggling 
race. He comes here to-day and thi^nks God that they are free, 
when his vote and his voice for five years, with hardly an excep- 
tion, have been against making them free. He thanks God, sir, 
that your work and mine, our work which has saved a country 
and emancipated a race, is secured ; while from the word ' go,' to 
this time, he has made himself the champion of ' how not to do 
it.' If there be a man on the floor of the American Senate who 
has tortured the Constitution of the country to find powers to 
arrest the voice of this nation which was endeavoring to make 
a race free, the Senator from Pennsylvania is the man ; and now 
he comes here and thanks God that a work which he has done 
his best to arrest, and which we have carried, is accomplished. I 
tell him to-day that we shall carry these other measures, whether 
he thanks God for them or not, whether he opposes them or not." 
[Laughter and applause in the galleries.] 

After an extended discussion, the Senate refused, by a vote of 



136 THE THIRTY-J^UYTH COJfGBESS. 

thirty-three against eleven, to adopt the amendment proposed by- 
Mr. Cowan. 

The bill was further discussed during three successive days, 
Messrs. Saulsbury, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, and Davis 
speaking against the measure, and ^Messrs. Fessenden, Creswell, 
and Trumbull in favor of it. Mr. Garrett Davis addressed the 
Senate more than once on the subject, and on the last day of the 
discussion made a very long speech, which was answered by Mr. 
Trumbull. The Senator from Illinois, at the conclusion of his 
speech, remarked : 

" What I have now said embraces, I believe, all the points of 
the long gentleman's speech except the sound and fury, and that 
I will not undertake to reply to." 

"You mean the short gentleman's long speech," interposed 
some Senator. 

"Did I say short?" asked Mr. Trumbull. "If so, it was a 
great mistake to speak of any thing connected with the Senator 
from Kentucky as short." [Laughter.] 

" It is long enough to reach you," responded Mr. Davis. 

The vote was soon afler taken on the passage of the bill, with 
the following result: 

Yeas— Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Cres- 
well, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes^ Harris, Henderson, 
Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Morgan, Mor- 
rill, Norton, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, 
Sumner, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, Williams, Wilson, and Yates— 37. 

Nays— Messrs. Buckalew, Davis, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, 
Riddle, Saulsbury, Stockton, and Wright— 10. 

Absent— Messrs. Cowan, Nesmith, and Willey— 3. 

The bill having passed, the question came up as to its title, 
which it was proposed to leave as reported by the committee : " A 
bill to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau." 

Mr. Davis moved to amend the title by substituting for it, 
"A bill to appropriate a portion of the public land in some of 
the Southern States and to authorize the United States Govern- 
ment to purchase lands to supply farms and build houses, upon 
them for the freed negroes ; to promote strife and conflict between 
the white and black races ; and to invest the Freedmen's Bureau 
with unconstitutional powers to aid and assist the blacks, and to 
introduce military power to prevent the commissioner and other 



THE FBEEDMEJ^. 137 

officers of said bureau from being restrained or held responsible in 
civil courts for their illegal acts in rendering such aid and assist- 
ance to the blacks, and for other jDurposes." 

The President pro tempore pronounced the amendment "not 
in order, inconsistent with the character of the bill, derogatory to 
the Senate, a reproach to its members." 

Mr. McDougall declared the proposed amendment "an insult 
to the action of the Senate." 

The unfortunate j)roposition was quietly abandoned by its au- 
thor, and passed over without further notice by the Senate. By 
unanimous consent, the title of the bill remained as first reported. 



13S TEE THIRTY-JflJfTH COJ^GRESS. 



CHAPTER VIL 

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU BILL IN THE HOUSE. 

The Bill reported to the House — Mr. Eliot's Speech — History — Mr. 
Dawson vs. the Negro — Mr. Garfield — The Idol Broken — Mr. Taylor 
counts the Cost — Mr. Donnelly's Amendment — Mr. Kerr — Mr. Mar- 
shall on White Slavery — Mr. Hubbard — Mr. Moulton — Opposition 
FROM Kentucky — Mr. Ritter — Mr. Rousseau's Threat — Mr. Shank- 
lin's Gloomy Prospect — Mr. Trimble's Appeal — Mr. McKee an ex- 
ceptional Kentuckian — Mr. Grinnell on Kentucky — The Example 
OF Russia — Mr. Phelps — Mr. Shellabarger's Amendment — Mr. Chan- 
LER — Mr. Stevens' Amendments — Mr. Eliot closes the Discussion — 
Passage of the Bill — Yeas and Nays. 

ON the day succeeding the passage of the bill in tlie Senate, 
it was sent to the House of Representatives, and by tliem 
referred to the Select Committee on the Freedmen. 

On the 30tli of January, Mr. Eliot, Chairman of this com- 
mittee, reported the bill to the House with amendments, mainly 
verbal alterations. 

In a speecb, advocating the passage of the bill, Mr. Eliot pre- 
sented something of the history of legislation for the freedmen. 
He said : " On the 3d day of last March the bill establishing a 
Frecdmen's Bureau became a law. It was novel legislation, 
without precedent in the history of any nation, rendered necessary 
by the rebellion of eleven slave States and the consequent libera- 
tion from slavery of four million persons whose unpaid labor 
had enriched the lands and impoverished the hearts of their 
relentless masters. 

" At an early day, when the fortunes of war had shown alter- 
nate triumphs and defeats to loyal arms, and the timid feared 
and the disloyal hoped, it was my grateful office to introduce 
the first bill creating a bureau of emancipation. It was during 



THE FBEEDMEJT. 139 

the Thirty-seventh Congress. But, although the select commit- 
t^to which the bill was referred was induced to agree that it 
should be reported to the House, it so happened that the dis- 
tinguished Chairman, Judge White, of Indiana, did not succeed 
in reporting it for our action. At the beginning of the Thirty- 
eighth Congress it Avas again presented, and very soon was re- 
ported back to the House under the title of ^A bill to establish 
a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs.' It was fully debated and 
passed by the House. The vote was sixty-nine in favor, and 
sixty-seven against the bill ; but of the sixty-seven who opposed 
it, fifty-six had been counted against it, because of their political 
affinities. On the 1st of March, 1864, the bill went to the 
Senate. It came back to the House on the 30th of June, four 
days before the adjournment of Congress. To my great regret, 
the Senate had passed an amendment in the nature of a sub- 
stitute, attaching this bureau to the Treasury Department; but 
it was too late to take action upon it then, and the bill was 
postponed until December. At that time the House non-con- 
concurred wii.li the Senate, and a committee of conference was 
chosen. The managers of the two houses could not agree as to 
whether the War Department or the Treasury should manage 
the affairs of the bureau. They therefore agreed upon a bill 
creating an independent department neither attached to the War 
nor Treasury, but communicating directly with the President, 
and resting for its support upon the arm of the War Department. 
That bill "^vas also passed by the House but was defeated in the 
Senate. Another Conference Committee was chosen, and that 
committee, whose chairman in the House was the distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio, then and now at the head of the Military 
Committee, agreed upon a bill attaching the bureau to the War 
Department, and embracing refugees as well as freedmen in its 
terms. That bill is now the law. 

"The law was approved on the 3d of March, 1865. Nine 
months have not yet elapsed since its organization. The order 
from the War Dejiartmeut under which the bureau was organized 
bears date on the 12th of May, 1865. General Howard, who 
was then in command of the Department of Tennessee, was 
assigned as commissioner of the bureau. The bill became a law 
so late in the session that it was impossible for Congress to 
legislate any appropriation for its support. It was necessary, 



140 THE TniBTT-MmTH COJ^'GRESS. 

therefore, that the management of it should be placed in the 
hands of military officers, and fortunately the provisions of Tlie 
bill permitted that to be done. General Howard was, as I 
stated in command of the Department of Tennessee, when he 
was detailed to this duty. But on the 15th of May, that is to 
say, within three days after the order appointing him, was issued, 
he assumed the duties of his office. 

" In the course of a few days, the commissioner of the bureau 
announced more particularly the policy which he designed to 
pursue. The whole supervision of the care of freedmen and of 
all lands which the law placed under the charge of the bureau 
was to be intrusted to assistant commissioners. 

"Before a month had expired, head-quarters had been estab- 
lished for assistant commissioners at Richmond, Raleigh, Beau- 
fort, Montgomery, Nashville, St. Louis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, 
and Jacksonville, and very shortly afterward assistant commis- 
sioners were designated for those posts of duty. They were re- 
quired to possess themselves, as soon as practicable, with the 
duties incident to their offices, to quicken in every way they 
could and to direct the industry of the freedmen. Notice was 
given that the relief establishments which had been created by 
law under the operations of the War Department should be dis- 
continued as soon as they could be consistently with the comfort 
and proper protection of the freedmen, and that every effi^rt 
should be made — and I call the attention of gentlemen to the 
fact that that policy has been pursued throughout — that every 
effort should be made to render the freedmen, at an early day, 
self-supporting. The supplies that had been furnished by the 
Government were only to be continued so long as the actual 
wants of the freedmen seemed to require it. At that time there 
were all over the country refugees who were seeking their homes, 
and they were notified that, under the care of the bureau, they 
would be protected from abuse, and directed in their efforts to 
secure transportation and proper facilities for reaching home. 

"Wherever there had been interruption of civil law, it w-as 
found impossible that the rights of freedmen could be asserted in 
the courts; and where there were no courts before which their 
rights could be brought for adjudication, military tribunals, pro- 
vost-marshals' courts, were established, for the purpose of de- 
termining upon questions arising between freedmen or between 



THE FBEEDMEJ^. I4I 

freedmen and other parties; and that, also, has been continued to 
this day. 

"The commissioners were instructed to permit the freedmen 
to select their own employers and to choose their own kind of 
service. All agreements were ordered to be free and mutual, and 
not to be compulsory. The old system that had prevailed of 
overseer labor was ordered to be repudiated by the commissioners 
who had charge of the laborers, and I believe there has been no 
time since the organization of the bureau when there have not 
been reports made to head-quarters at Washington of all labor 
contracts; and wherever any provisions had been inserted, by 
inadvertence or otherwise, that seemed unjustly to operate against 
the freedmen, they have been stricken out by direction of the 
commissioner here. 

" In the course of the next month, action was taken by the 
commissioner respecting a provision of the law as it was passed 
in March, authorizing the Secretary of War to make issues of 
clothing and provisions, and the assistant commissioners were re- 
quired carefully to ascertain whatever might be needed under that 
provision of the law, and to make periodical reports as to the de- 
mands made upon the Government through the bureau. Direc- 
tions were given by the commissioner to his assistant commission- 
ers to make repeated reports to him upon all the various subjects 
which had come under his charge — with regard to the number 
of freedmen, where they were, whether in camps or in colonies, 
or whether they were employed upon Government works, and 
stating, if they obtained supplies, how they were furnished, 
whether by donations or whether procured by purchase. Reports 
were also required as to all lands which had been put under the 
care of the bureau ; and statements were called for showing de- 
scriptions of the lands, whether, in the language of the law, 
' abandoned ' or ' confiscated,' so that the bureau here could have 
full and complete information of all action of its agents through- 
out these States, and upon examination it could be determined 
where any specific lands which were under the charge of the bu- 
reau came from, and how they were derived. 

" In the course of tlie summer, it became necessary to issue ad- 
ditional instructions. The commissioner found that his way was 
beset with difficulties ; he was walking upon unknown ground ; he 
was testing here and there questions involved in doubt. It was 



14^ THE TniBTY-NIKTH COJ^GBESS. 

hardly possible at once aud by one order to designate all that it 
Nvould be needful for him to do, and, therefore, different instruc- 
tions were issued from time to time from his office. The assist- 
ant commissioners were called upon thoroughly to examine, 
either by themselves or their agents, the respective districts allot- 
ted to them, to make inquiry as to the character of the freedmen 
under their charge, their ability to labor, their disposition to 
labor, and the circumstances under which they were placed, so 
that the aid, the care, and the protection which the law contem- 
plated might be afforded to them as quickly and as economically 
as possible. 

"The commissioner continually repeated his injunctions to his 
assistants to be sure that no compulsory or unpaid labor was tol- 
erated, and that both the moral and intellectual condition of the 
freedmen should be improved as systematically and as quickly as 
practicable. 

" When the bureau was first organized, indeed when it was first 
urged upon the attention of this House, it was stated and it .was 
believed that the bureau would very shortly be self-sustaining. 
That was the idea from the beginning. And when it was stated 
here in debate that the bureau would probably be self-sustaining, 
it was supposed that from the lands abandoned, confiscated, sold, 
and the lands of the United States, which by the provisions of 
the bill had been placed under the care of the commissioner, 
these freedmen would be given an opportunity to earn substan- 
tially enough for the conduct of the bureau. And I have no 
doubt at all that such would have been the case had the original 
expectation been carried out. 

"There were large tracts of land in Virginia and the other 
rebel States which were clearly apj)licable to this purpose. There 
was the source of supply — the lands and the labor. There were 
laborers enough, and there was rich land enough. At a very 
early day the abandoned lands were turned over to the care of 
the commissioners, and I supposed, and probably we all supposed, 
that the lands which in the language of the law were known as 
' abandoned lands,' and those which were in the possession of the 
United States, would be appropriated to the uses of these freed- 
men. AVithin a week after the commissioner assumed the duties 
of his office, he found it necessary to issue an order substantially 
like this : Whereas, large amounts of lands in the State of Vir- 



THE FREEDMEM. 143 

ginia and in other States have been abandoned, and are now in 
the possession of the frcedmen, and arc now under cultivation by 
them; and, whereas, the owners of those lands are now calling 
for their restoration, so as to deprive the freedraen of the results 
of their industry, it is ordered that the abandoned lands now 
under cultivation be retained by the freedmen until the growing 
crops can be secured, unless full and just compensation can be 
made them for their labor and its products. 

"'The above order' — this is the part about which it appeared 
that some difference of judgment existed between the Executive 
and the commissioner of the bureau — 'the above order will not 
be construed so as to relieve disloyal persons from the conse- 
quences of their disloyalty; and the application for the restora- 
tion of their lands by this class of persons will in no case be 
entertained by any military authority/ 

" It was found, not a great while afterward, that the views 
which the President entertained as to his duty were somewhat in 
conflict with the provisions of this order ; for it was held by the 
President that persons who had brought themselves within the 
range of his pardon and had secured it, and who had taken or 
did afterward take the amnesty oath, would be entitled, as one 
of the results of the pardon and of their position after the oath 
had been taken, to a restoration of their lands which had been 
assigned to freedmen. In consequence of this, an order was sub- 
sequently issued, well known as circular No. 15. And under the 
operation of that circular, on its a^jpearing satisfactorily to any 
assistant commissioner that any j)roperty under his control is not 
* abandoned,' as defined in the law, and that the United States 
have acquired no perfect right to it, it is to be restored and the 
fact reported to the commissioner. 'Abandoned' lands were to 
be restored to the owners pardoned by the President, by the assist- 
ant commissioners, to whom applications for such restoration were 
to be forwarded ; and each application was to be accompanied by 
the pardon of the President and by a copy of the oath of amnesty 
prescribed in the President's proclamation, and also by a proof of 
title to the land. It must be obvious that the effect of this must 
have been to transfer from the care of the bureau to the owners 
very large portions of the land which had been relied upon for 
the support of the freedmen. Within a few weeks from the date 
of that order, no less than §800,000 worth of property in New 



144 THE THIRTY-KINTH COKGRESS. 

Orleans was transferred, and about one third of the whole prop- 
erty in North Carolina in possession of the bureau was given up ; 
and the officer having charge of the land department rejDorts that 
before the end of the year, in all probability, there will be under 
the charge of the commissioner little, if any, of the lands origi- 
nally designed for the support of these freedmen. 

" It is obvious, if these lands are to be taken, that other lands 
must be provided, or the freedmen will become a dead weight 
upon the Treasury, and the bill under consideration assigns other 
lands, in the place of those thus taken, from the imoccupied pub- 
lic lands of the United States." 

On the following day, Mr. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, obtained 
the floor in opposition to the bill. His speech was not devoted 
to a discussion of the bill in question, but was occupied entirely 
with general political and social topics. The following extract 
indicates the tenor of the speech : 

"Negro equality does not exist in nature. The African is 
without a history. He has never shown himself capable of self- 
government by the creation of a single independent State possess- 
ing the attributes which challenge the respect of others. The 
past is silent of any negro peoj)le who possessed military and 
civil organization, who cultivated the arts at home, or conducted ■ 
a regular commerce with their neighbors. No African general 
has marched south of the desert, from the waters of the Nile to 
the Niger and Senegal, to unite by conquest the scattered terri- 
tories of barbarous tribes into one great and homogeneous king- 
dom. No Moses, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred has left theiji a code 
of wise and salutary laws. They have had no builder of cities ; 
they have no representatives in the arts, in science, or in litera- 
ture; they have been without even a monument, an alphabet, or 
a hieroglyphic." 

On the other hand, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, among the friends 
of the measure, delivered a speech " on the Freedmen's Bureau 
Bill," in which the topic discussed was " Restoration of the Rebel 
States." In the course of his remarks Mr. Garfield said : 

" Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. 
When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he 
bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the cen- 
tral sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. 
Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may 



THE FREEDMEJf. I45 

he rocked by earthquakes, may be tievastatcd by all the terres- 
trial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the ever- 
lasttng depths, the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in it§ 
place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are 
covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below 
the soil, but it must still revolve in its ajipointed orbit. So Ala- 
bama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but 
she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people 
of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience 
and duty." 

After having quoted Gibbon's narrative of the destruction of 
_ the collossal statue of Serapis by Thcophilus, Mr. Garfield said : 
"So slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled 
the temple of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. 
Lincoln, on the 1st of January, 1863, struck it on the cheek, and 
the faithless and unbelieving among us expected to see the fabric 
of our institutions dissolve into chaos because their idol had fallen. 
He struck it again ; Congress and the States repeated the blow, 
and its unsightly carcass lies rotting in our streets. The sun 
shines in the heavens brighter than before. Let us remove the 
carcass and leave not a vestige of the monster. We shall never 
have done that until we have dared to come up to the spirit of 
the Pilgrim covenant of 1620, and declare that all men shall be 
consulted in regard to the disposition of their lives, liberty, and 
property. The Pilgrim fathers proceeded on the doctrine that 
every man was supposed to know best what he wanted, and had 
the right to a voice in the disposition of himself" 

Mr. Taylor, of New York, opposed the bill principally on the 
ground of the expense involved in its execution. After having 
presented many columns of figures, Mr. Taylor arrived at this 
conclusion: "The cost or proximate cost of the bureau for one 
year, confining its operation to the hitherto slave States, will be 
$25,251,600. That it is intended to put the bureau in full ope- 
ration in every county and parish of the hitherto slave States, 
including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, I have 
not the least doubt, nor have I any doubt but that it is intended 
to extend it into parts of some of the border States." 

Mr. Donnelly moved to amend the bill by inserting the pro- 
vision that "the commissioner may provide a common-school 
education for all refugees and freedmen who shall apply therefor." 
. 10 



146 THE THIRTY-JfljYTH COJ^GBESS. 

He advocated education as an efficient means of restoration for 
the South. He j)resented ample tables of statistics, and summed 
up the results in their bearing upon his argument as follows :* 

" The Avhole United States, with a population of 27,000,000, 
contains 834,106 illiterate persons, and of these 545,177 are found 
in the Southern States with a population of 12,000,000. In other 
words, the entire populous North contains but 288,923, w4iile the 
sparsely-settled South contains 545,177." 

As an argument for the passage of the bill, he answered the 
question, " What has the South done for the black man since the 
close of the rebellion ? " 

" In South Carolina it is provided that all male negroes be- 
tween two and twenty, and all females between two and eighteen, 
shall be bound out to some 'master.' The adult negro is com- 
pelled to enter into contract with a master, and the district judge, 
not the laborer, is to fix the value of the labor. If he thinks 
the compensation too small and will not work, he is a vagrant, 
and can be hired out for a term of service at a rate again to be 
fixed by the judge. If. a hired negro leaves his employer he for- 
feits his wages for the whole year. 

"The black code of Mississippi provides that no negro shall 
own or hire lands in the State; that he shall not sue nor testify 
in court against a white man; that he must be employed by a 
master before the second Monday in January, or he will be bound 
out — in other words, sold into slavery ; that if he runs away the 
master may recover him, and deduct the expenses out of his 
wages ; and that if another man employs him he will be liable to 
an action for damages. It is true, the President has directed 
General Thomas to disregard this code; but the moment the 
military force is withdrawn from the State that order will be of 
no effect. 

" The black code of Alabama provides that if a negro who has 
contracted to labor fails to do so, he shall be punished with dam- 
ages; and if he runs away he shall be punished as a vagrant, 
which probably means that he shall be sold to the highest bidder 
for a term of years ; and that any person who entices him to leave 
his master, as by the offer of better wages, shall be guilty of a 
misdemeanor, and may be sent to jail for six months; and further, 
that these regulations include all i)ersons of negro blood to the 
third generation, though one parent in each generation shall be 



• TIIE^ FREEDMEJf. I47 

pure white; that is, down to the man who has but "one eighth 
negro blood in his veins. 

After quoting the black codes of other States, the speaker thus 
epitomized their substance : " All this means simply the reestab- 
lishment of slavery. 

" 1. He shall work at a rate 'of wages to be fixed by a county 
jtdge or a Legisla'ture made up of white masters, or by combina- 
tions of white masters, and not in any case by himself. 

*" 2. He shall not leave that master to enter service with an- 
other. If he does he is pursued as a fugitive, charged with the 
expenses of his recapture, and made to labor for an additional 
period, while the white man who induced him to leave is sent to 
jail. 

"3. His children are taken from him and sold into, virtual 
slavery. 

" 4. If he refuses to work, he is sold to the highest bidder for 
a term of months or years, and becomes, in fact, a slave. 

" 5. He can not better his condition ; there is no future for 
him ; he shall not own property ; he shall not superintend the 
education of his children ; neither will the State educate them. 

"6. If he is wronged, he has no remedy ; for the courts are 
closed against him." 

Mr. Kerr, of Indiana, addressed the House on the subject of 
reconstruction, maintaining, by extended arguments and quota- 
tions from learned authorities, that the rebel States were still in 
the Union. He concluded his speech by opposing the bill under 
consideration on the ground of its expense : " It involves the 
creation of a small army of agents and commissioners, whose 
jurisdiction and control shall pervade the whole country, shall 
extend into every State, into every congressional district, into 
every county, into every township and city of this broad Union; 
provided, only, that they can find some freedmen or refugees upon 
whom to exercise their jurisdiction. I submit that, before a 
measure of this kind should be adopted, we should reflect most 
carefully upon what we are doing. We should remember that 
this country is now almost crushed into the very earth with its 
accumulated burden of j)ublic debt, of State debts, of county 
debts, of city debts, of township debts, of individual debts. "VVe 
should bear in mind that we may impose upon the people of this 
country, by this kind of latitudinarian and most dangerous legis- 



14S TEE THIRTT-JfIJ\'TH COJ\'GBESS. . 

lation, a bm-Jcn that is too heavy to be borne, and against which 
the day may come when the people, as one man, Avill feel them- 
selves called upon to protest in such a manner as forever to over- 
throM' that kind of legislation, and condemn to merited reproach 
those -who favor it." 

On a subsequent day of the discussion, Mr. Marshall, of Illi- 
nois, spoke against the bill. He put much stress upon an objec- 
tion to which nearly all the opponents of the bill had referred, 
namely, that Congress had no warrant in tke Constitution for 
passing such a measure. He said : " Instead of this being called 
a bill for the protection of freedmen and refugees, it ought to be 
called a bill for the j)nrpose of destroying the Constitution of thfe 
United States, and subjecting the people thereof to military power 
and domination. That would be a much more ajjpropriate title." 

Mr. Marshall was opposed to bestowing any thing in charity. 
" I deny," said he, " that this Federal Government has any 
authority to become the common almoner of the charities of the 
peoj^le. I deny that there is any authority in the Federal Con- 
stitution to authorize us to put our hands into their pockets and 
take therefrom a part of their hard earnings in order to dis- 
tribute them as charity. I deny that the Federal Government 
was established for any such purj)ose, or that there is any au- 
thority or warrant in the Constitution for the measures which 
are proposed in this most extraordinary bill." 

He viewed with horror the slavery which the head of the War 
Department could impose uj)Ou the people by virtue of the pro- 
visions of ihis bill. " He is to send his military satraps," said 
Mr. Marshall, "into every county and district of these States; 
and they may enslave and put down the entire white people of the 
country by virtue of this law." He saw in the bill power " to rob 
the people by unjust taxation; to take the hard earnings from the 
Avhite people of the West, who, unless wiser counsels prevail, will 
themselves soon be reduced io worse than Egyptian bondage. I . 
demand to be informed here upon this floor by what power you 
put your hands into their j^ockets and drag from them their 
money to carry out the purposes of this measure." 

Mr. Hubbard, of Connecticut, made a short speech in reply to 
the speaker last quoted. He said : " The gentleman from Illinois, 
some twenty times in the course of his eloquent speech this morn- 
ing, called upon some one to tell him where Congress gets the 



THE FREEDMEJf. 149 

power to enact sucli a law as this. In the first place, I commend 
to him to read the second section of the article of the immortal 
amendment of the Constitution, giving to Congress power to pass 
all appropriate laws and make all appropriate legislation for the 
purpose of carrying out its provisions. I commend to his careful 
study the spirit of the second section of that immortal amendment, 
and I think, if he will study it with a willingness to he convinced, 
he will see that it has given to this Congress full power in the 
premises. Moreover, sir, I read in the Constitution that Congress 
has been at all times charged with the duty of providing for the 
public welfare ; and if Congress shall deem that the public wel- 
fare requires this enactment, it is the sworn duty of every mem- 
ber to give the bill his support. 

" Sir, there is an old maxiin of law in which I have very con- 
siderable faith, that regard must be had to the public welfare ; 
and this maxim is said to be the highest law. It is the law of 
the Constitution, and in the light of that Constitution as amended 
I find ample power for the enactment of this law. It is the duty 
of Congress to exercise its power in such a time as this, in a time 
of public peril ; and I hope that nobody on this side of the House 
will be so. craven as to want courage to come up to the question 
and give his vote for the bill. It is necessary to provide for the 
public welfare." 

Mr. Moulton, of Illinois, spoke in favor of the bill. Of the 
oft-repeated objection that " this bill is in violation of the Con- 
stitution of the United States," he said : " This is the very argu- 
ment that we have heard from the other side of this chamber for 
the last five years with reference to every single measure that has 
been proposed to this House for t^e prosecution of the war for 
the Union. No measure has been passed for the benefit of the 
country, for the prosecution of this war, for the defense of your 
rights and mine, but has been assailed by gentlemen on the oppo- 
site side of this House with the argument that the whole thing 
was unconstitutional." 

He then proceeded to set forth at length the authority ef 
Congress to pass such a bill. 

Very strenuous opposition to the passage of the bill was made 
by most of the members from Kentucky. Mr. Eittcr, of that 
State, uttered his earnest protest at considerable length against 
the measure. He presented his views of the "grand purposes 



150 THE THIRTY-J^IXTH COJ^GRESS. 

and designs of those who introduced this bill." In his opinion 
they intended " to commence a colony in each one of the five 
States above named^ which is ultimately to drive out the entire 
white population of those States and fill their places with the 
negro race. And whether this is the design or not, it is certain, 
in my judgment, to ha,ve this effect. And they could not have 
devised a more effectual scheme for that purpose. 

" Sir, it is not to be expected that the two races -will live con- 
tentedly where there are large numbers of the colored people 
living near to neighborhoods settled with white persons. Expe- 
rience has proved to many of us that wherever large numbers of 
colored peojile live, that the white people living within five or ten 
miles of the place become sufferers to a very large extent. Now, 
sir, if this should be the case (as I liave no doubt it will) in the 
States in which you propose to establish these people, the Avhites 
and blacks will disagree to such an extent that, when peoj^le find 
that the colored people are permanently established, they will be 
compelled, in self defense, to seek a home somewhere else. No 
doubt, Mr. Speaker, but that those who prepared this bill saw 
that the difficulties and disagreements to whicJi I have just al- 
luded would arise, and hence they require that military jurisdiction 
and protection shall be extended, so as to give safety in their 
movements ; and if the white inhabitants become dissatisfied, the 
commissioner is prepared with authority by this bill to buy 
them out and put the negroes upon the land." 

He thus presented his calculation of the cost of carrying out 
the bill as an argument against it: "In 1822 the ordinary ex- 
penses of the Government were 19,827,6-13, and in 1823 the ex- 
penses amounted to the sum of $9,784,154. Xow, sir, who could 
have thought at that day that in the comparatively short time of 
forty-three years it would require the sum of even §12,000,000 to 
fix up a machinery alone for the benefit of three or four million 
negroes, and more especially, sir, when it is understood that in 
1820 we had a population, including white and colored, of 9,633,- 
545. Mr. Speaker, how long will it be at this rate — when we 
take into consideration the fact that our Government proper, be- 
sides this little bureau machine, is now costing us hundreds of 
millions of dollars — how long, sir, will it be before we have to 
call in the services of Mr. Kennedy, of census notoriety, to esti- 
mate the amount of the debt we owe ? " 



THE FREEDMEM. 151 

Mr. Rousseau, of Kentucky, in defining his position, said : " I 
am not a Republican; I was a Whig and a Union man, and belong 
to the Union party, and I am sorry to say that the Union party 
and the Republican party are not always convertible terms." 

Mr. Rousseau .urged against the Freednien's Bureau Bill the 
wfougs and 02-)pressions which its abuses heaped upon the people 
of the South. In the course of his speech Mr. Rousseau quoted 
what he had said on one occasion to an official of the Freedmen's 
Bureau : " I said to him, ' if you intend to arrest white people on 
the ex jicii'te statements of negroes, and hold them to suit your 
convenience for trial, and fine and imprison them, then I say that 
I oppose you; and if you should so arrest and punish me, I 
would kill you when you set me at liberty ; and I think that you 
would do the same to a man who would treat you in that way, 
if you are the man I think you are, and the man you ought to 
be to fill your position here.' " 

This extract has considerable importance as being the occasion 
of an unfortunate personal difficulty between Mr, Rousseau and 
Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, narrated in a subsequent chapter. The 
letter portion of Mr. Rousseau's speech was devoted to the subject 
of reconstruction. He was followed by Mr. Shanklin, of Ken- 
tucky. He characterized the Freedmen's Bureau as a "gigantic 
monster." He declared that " the effect of this measure upon the 
negro population will be to paralyze their energy, destroy their 
industry, and make them paupers and vagabonds." He saw 
" revolution and ruin " in prospect. " I affirm," said he, " that 
in legislating for those States, or without allowing them any 
representation in these halls, you are violating one of the cardi- 
nal principles of republican government ; you are tearing down 
the main pillar upon which our whole fabric of Government 
rests ; you are sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution and ruin. 
ISIr. Speaker, if the object of gentlemen here' is to restore har- 
mony and peace apd prosperity throughout the Union, why do 
they adopt measures thus insulting, tyrannical, and oppressive in 
their character? Is this the way to restore harmony and peace 
and prosperity? How can you expect to gain the respect and 
affection of those people by heaping upon them insult and injus- 
tice ? If they have the spirit of their ancestors, you may crush 
them, you may slay them, but you can never cause them to love 



152 THE THIBTT-JflMTH COJfGRESS. 

you or respect you; aud they ought not while you force upon 
them measures which are only intended to degrade them." 

Mr. Trimble, of Kentucky, viewed the question in a similar 
light to that in which it was regarded by his colleague. "I 
hold/' said he, "this bill is in open and plain. violation of that 
provision of the Constitution. There exists no power in this 
Government to deprive a citizen of the United States of his prop- 
erty, to take away the hard earnings of his own industry and 
bestow them upon this class of citizens. The only way you can 
take property in South Carolina, Georgia, or any other State, is 
to take that property under the Constitution of the United States 
and the laws passed in pursuance thereof." 

He closed his sijeech with the following appeal : " I appeal to 
my friends who love this Union, who love it for all the memories 
of the past, who love it because it has protected them and theirs ; 
I appeal to them to pause and reflect before they press this meas- 
ure u^ion these people; for I tell you that, in my judgment, the 
effects of the provisions of this bill to us as a nation will not be 
told in our lifetimes. If legislation of this character is to be 
pressed here, I awfully fear hope will sink within us. Our lov^ 
for this Union and desire for its restoration will be greatly weak- 
ened and estranged." 

Mr. McKee alone, of all the Representatives from Kentucky, 
was favorable to the bill. The opponents of the measure had 
spoken of it as a " monstrous usurpation." " We have heard that 
talk," said Mr. McKee, "for more than four years here. What 
bill has been introduced into and passed .by Congress since this 
war began that this same party has not been accustomed to de- 
nounce as a monstrous usurpation of power? When the President 
of the United States issued his call for troops they cried out, ' A 
monstrous usurpation of power.' When he sent a requisition to 
the Governor of my own State, what was the response ? ' Not a 
man, not a dollar, to prosecute this wickecl war against our 
Southern brethren.' And the Union party, God Jielp them ! in 
Kentucky, indorsed the sentiment at that day. I did not belong 
to that part of the Union party; I never belonged to that 'neu- 
trality concern.' I never put in my oar to help propel that ship 
which was in favor of thundering forth with its cannon against 
the Nortli and tlie South alike. I never belonged to that party 
which said, 'We will stand as a wall of fire against either side.' 



TEE FEEEBMEX. • 153 

I thank God I never stood upon but one side, and that was the 
side of my country, against treason, against oppression, against 
wrong in all its forms." 

In arguing the necessity for some such legislation as that pro- 
vided in this bill, INIr. McKcc asked, " Has any Southern State 
given the freedmen 'their full rights and full protection?' Is 
there a solitary State of those that have been in rebellion, (and I 
include my own State with the rest, because, although she has 
never been, by proclamation, declared a State in rebellion, I think 
she has been one of the most rebellious of the whole crew,) is 
there a single one of these States that has passed laws to give 
the freedmen full protection? In vain we wait an affirmative 
response. Until these States have done so, says this high author- 
ity, the Freedmen's Bureau is a necessity. This is to my mind a 
.sufficient answer to the arguments of gentlemen on the other side. 
In none of those States has the black man a law to protect him 
in his rights, either of person or property. He can sue in a court 
of justice in my State, but he can command no testimony in his 
prosecution or defense unless the witness be a white man. We 
have one code for the white man, another for the black. Is this 
justice? AVhere is your court of justice in any Southern State 
where the black man can secure protection? Again there is no 
response." 

Mr. Grinnell, of lowaj a member of the committee that had 
reported this bill, took the floor in its favor. Much having been 
said by Eepresentatives of Kentucky in reference to that State, 
INIr. Grinnell remarked: "I can not forget, when I hear these- 
extravagant claims set up here, that her Governor, in the first 
year of the rebellion, refused to honor the call for troops made 
by the President of the United States in our darkest hour ; nor 
can I forget that when her soldiers wished to organize regiments 
they were obliged to cross the Ohio River into the State of In- 
diana, that they might organize them free from the interference 
of the power of Kentucky neutrality. That is a fact in history, 
"and I can not overlook it, when gentlemen here arraign the 
President of the United States because he has seen fit to suspend 
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the State of 
Kentucky." • ' 

" Let us see," said Mr. Grinnell, in a subsequent part of his 
speech, '^ what are the laws of Kentucky which are so just and 



154 " THE THIBTY-.YI^'TH CONGRESS. 

honorable aud equitable. The white man in Kentucky can testify 
in the courts; the black man can testify against himself. The 
M-hite man can votfe; the black man can not. The white man, 
if he commits an offense, is tried by a jury of his peers; the 
black man is tried by his enlightened, unprejudiced superiors. 
The rape of a negro woman by a white man is no offense ; the 
rape of a white woman by a negro man is punishable by death, 
and the Governor of the State can not commute. 

" A white man may come into Kentucky when he pleases ; the 
free negro who comes there is a felon, though a discharged sol- 
dier, and wounded in our battles. A white man in Kentucky 
may keep a gun; if a black man buys a gun he forfeits it, and 
pays a fine of five dollars if presuming to keep in his possession 
a musket which he has carried through the war. Arson of public 
buildings, if committed by a white man, is punished by imprison- 
ment in the penitentiary for a term of from seven to twenty-one 
years; if committed by a black man, the punishment is death. 
Arson of a warehouse, etc., when committed by a white man, is 
punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary from one to six 
years; when committed by a negro, the penalty is death. 

" If a white man is guilty of insurrection or rebellion, he is 
punished by being called ' chivalrous.' I instance the rebel 
General Forest, who murdered white men at Fort Pillow, and is 
reputed the most popular 'man South. If a negro rebels, or con- 
spires to rebel, he is punished w'ith death. These are specimens." 

Referring to the benefits conferred by the Freedmen's Bureau 
upon Kentucky, Mr. -Grinnell remarked : " As it is asserted that 
this Freedmen's Bureau is a partial, unnecessary, speculating 
affair, I wish to call attention to the fact that in the State of 
Kentucky, during the last five months, more white refugees than 
freedmen, in the proportion of seven aud one-fourth to one, have 
received rations at the hands ©f the Government; that this 
bureau has kept in schools in the State of Kentucky fourteen 
thousand black people. 

In further illustration of the work accomplished by this in- 
strumentality, he said: "This bureau is in charge of 800,000 
acres of land aud 1,500 pieces of town j)roperty. It has issued 
more than 600,000 rations to refugees, and. 3,500,000 to freed- 
men. . It has treated 2,500 refugees in hospitals, and decently 
buried 227 of theni. It has treated 45,000 freedmen, and made 



TEE. FREED MEK. 155 

the graves for 6,000 of the number. Transportation has been 
furnished to 1,700 refugees and 1,900 frcedmen. In the schools 
there are 80,000 people that have been instructed by this bureau. 
And now it is proposed to leave all these children of misfortune 
to the tender mercies of a people of whom it is true by the 
Spanish maxim, ' Since I have wronged you I have hated you.' 
I never can. Our authority to take care of them is founded in 
the Constitution; else it is not worthy to be our great charter. 
It gives authority to feed Indian tribes, though our enemies, and 
a just interpretation can not restrain us in clothing and feeding 
unfortunate friends. In providing schools, we can turn to the 
same authority which led to the gift of millions of acres of the 
public domain for the purpose of establishing agricultural" colleges 
in this country." 

He referred to Kussia for example of what should be done in 
such an emergency: "We should be worse than barbarians to 
leave these people where they are, landless, poor, unprotected ; 
and I commend to gentlemen Avho still cling to the delusion that 
all is well, to take lessons of the Czar of the Jlussias, who, when 
he enfranchised his people, gave them lands and school-houses, 
and invited school-masters from all the world to come there and 
instruct them. Let us hush our national songs; rather gird on 
sack-cloth, if wanting in moral courage to reap the fruits of our 
war by being just and considerate to those who look up to us for 
temporary counsel and protection. Care and education are 
cheaper for the nation than neglect, and nothing is plainer in 
the counsels of heaven or the world's History." 

An allusion made by ]\Ir. Grinnell to the speech of Mr. Eos- 
seau, provoked the personal assault to be described hereafter. 

Mr. Raymond having the floor for a personal explanation, took 
occasion to make the following remarks in reference to the bill; 
" I have no apprehensions as to the practical workings of this 
law. So far as I have been able to collect information from all 
quarters — and I have taken some pains to do so — I find that this 
law, like most other laws on our statute books, works well where 
it is weir administered. The practical operations of this bureau 
will depend upon the character of the agents into whose hands its 
management is intrusted. I certainly have no apprehension in 
this respect. I do not for one moment fear that the agents who 
will be appointed to carry this law into execution will not use the 



loG THE THIRTY-KIXTH CONGRESS. , 

powers conferred upon tlicm for the furtherance of the great object 
which we all have in view — the reconciliation^ the protection, the 
security of all classes of those who are now our fellow-citizens in 
the Southern States." 

Mr. Phelj)s, of Maryland, made a speech indorsing the prin- 
ciple of the bill, but objecting to some of its details. His objec- 
tions were removed by the presentation and accejitance of the 
following amendment by Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio: "No person 
shall be deemed destitute, suffering, or dependent upon the Gov- 
ernment for support, within the meaning of this act, who, being 
able to find employment, could, by proper industry and exertion, 
avoid such destitution, suffering and dependence." 

]Mr. Chanler made a long speech in opposition to the bill. He 
gave particular attention to the speech of Mr. Donnelly, of Min- 
nesota, who had advocated education as a necessity for. the 
South. "The malignant party spirit and sectional hate," said 
Mr. Chanler, "that runs through this whole statement, needs 
no illustration." After presenting voluminous extracts from 
speeches, letters, aad public documents, Mr. Chanler summed up 
his objections to the bill in the following words : " Our people 
are not willing to live under military rule. 

" This bureau is under military rule. It proposes to per- 
petuate and strengthen itself by the present bill. 

" It founds* an ' imperlum in imperio ' to protect black labor 
against white labor. 

" It excludes the foreign immigrant from the lands given to the 
native-born negro. 

"It subjects the white native-born citizen to the ignominy of 
surrendering his patrimony, his self-respect, and his right to labor 
into the hands of negroes, idle, ignorant, and misled by fanatip, 
selfish speculators." 

Mr. Stevens desired to amend the bill by striking out the lim- 
itation to three years given the possessory titles conferred by Gen- 
eral Sherman, and rendering them perpetual. This amendment 
the House were unwilling to accejjt. Mr. Stevens further pro- 
posed to strike out the proviso " unless as punishment for crime, 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," giving as a 
reason for thia amendment, " I know that men are convicted of 
assault and battery, and sentenced to slavery down there.* I have 



THE FBEEDMEJf. 157 

authentic evidence of that fact in several letters, and, therefore, I 
j)ropose to strike out those Avords." • 

This amendment was adopted. Another imjDortant amendment 
proposed by the committee was the limitation of the operation of 
the bill to States in which the writ of habeas corpus was sus- 
pended on the 1st of February, 1866. Mr. Eliot closed the de- 
bate by answering some objections to the bill, and presenting some 
official documents proving the beneficent results of the bureau, 
especially in the State of Kentucky. 

On the 6th of February the question was taken, and the bill 
passed by the follo^ving vote : 

Yeas — Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Deloa R Ashley, James 
M. Ashley, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, 
Bidwell, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Boutwell, Brandegee, Bromwell, Broomall, 
Bundy, Reader W. Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, 
Darling, Davis, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Donnelly, Driggs, 
Dumont, Eckley, Eggleston, Eliot, Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, 
Grinnell, Griswold, Hale, Abner C. Harding, Hart, Hayes, Henderson, 
Higby, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. 
Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, James 
IJumphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, 
Kuykendall, Laflin, Latham, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Loan, 
Long-year, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, McClurg, Mclndoe, McKee, McRucr, 
Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, Newell, O'Neill, 
Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Phelps, Pike, Plants, Pomeroy, Price, Wil- 
liam H. Randall, Raymond, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, 
Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Smith, Spalding, Starr, Stevens, 
Stilwell, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, Trowbridgej Upson, 
Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Warner, 
Elihu B. Washburne, William B. Washburn, Welker, Wentworth, Whaley, 
Williams, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Wood- 
bridge. — 136. 

Nays — Messrs. Boyer, Brooks, Chanler, Dawson, Eldridge, Finck, Gloss- 
brenner, Grider, Aaron Harding, Harris, Hogan, Edwin N. Hubbell, James 
M. Humphrey, Kerr, Le Blond, Marshall, McCuUough, Niblack, Nicholson, 
Noell, Samuel J. Randall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosseau, -Shanklin, Sit- 
greaves, Strouse, Taber, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, and Wright — 33. 

Not Voting — ^^lessrs. Ancona, Bergen, Buckland, Culver, Denison, Good- 
year, Hulburd, Johnson, Jones, Radford, Sloan, Voorhees, and Winfield — 13. 



158 THE THIBTT-J^IJiTH' COiN'GRESS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SENATE AND THE VETO MESSAGE. 

Xr. Tkcmbull ox the amendments of the House — Mr. Guthrie exhibits 
FEELING — Mk. Sherman's deliberate conclusion — Mr. Henderson's 
sovereign remedy — Mr. Trumbull on patent medicines — Mr. Mc- 

DOUGALL a white MAN — Mr. ReVERDT JoHNSQN ON THE POWER TO PASS 

THE BILL— Concurrence op the House — The Veto Message — Mr. Lane, 
OF Kansas— His efforts for delay — Mr. Garrett Davis — Mr. Trum- 
bull's REPLY to the President — The question taken — Yeas and nays — 
Failure of passage. 

ON the 7th of February the amendments of the Hoase to the 
Freedmen's Bureau Bill were presented to the Senate, and 
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. 
dn the following day Mr. Trumbull, chairman of this commit- 
tee, reported certain amendments to the amendments made by the 
House of Eepresentatives. ISIr. Trumbull said : " The House of 
Representatives have adopted a substitute for the whole bill, but 
it is the Senate bill verbatim, with a few exceptions, which I will 
endeavor to point out. The title of the bill has been changed, to 
begin with. It was called as it passed the Senate ' A bill to en- 
large the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau.' The House has 
amended the title so as to make it read, ' A bill to amend an act 
entitled " An act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen 
and Refugees," and for other purposes.' Of course, there is no 
importance in that. 

"The first amendment which the House has made, and the* 
most important one, Avill be found to commence in the eighth line 
of the first section. The House has inserted words limiting the 
operation of the Freedmen's Bureau to those sections of country 
within which the writ of habeas corpus was suspended on the 1st 
day of February, 1866. As the bill passed the Senate, it will be 



THE FEEEDMEJf. 159 

remembered that it extended to refugees and freedmen in all parts 
of the United States, and the" President was authorized to divide 
the section of country containing such refugees and freedmen into 
districts. The House amend that so as to authorize the President 
to divide the section of country within which the privilege of the 
writ of habeas corpus was suspended on the 1st day of February, 
1866, containing such refugees and freedmen, into districts. The 
writ of habeas corpus on the 1st day of February last was sus- 
pended in the late rebellious States, inclitding Kentucky, and in 
none other. The writ of habeas corpus was restored by the Presi- 
dent's proclamation in Maryland, in Delaware, and in Missouri, 
all of which have been slaveholding States. 

"As the bill passed the Senate, it will be observed it only ex- 
tended to refugees and freedmen* in the United States, wherever 
they might be, and the President was authorized to divide the 
region of country containing such refugees and freedmen, and it 
had no operation except in States where there were refugees and 
freedmen. The House has limited it so that it will not have 
ojperation in Maryland, or Delaware, or Missouri, or any of the 
Northern States." 

After Mr. Trumbull had stated the other and less important 
amendments made by the House, the^ Senate proceeded to consider 
the amendments proposed by the Judiciary Committee, the first 
of which was to strike out the words " within which the privileges 
of the writ of habeas corpus was suspended on the 1st day of Feb- 
ruary, 1866." 

]Mr. Trumbull said : " I wish to say upon that point that the 
bill as it passed the Senate can have no operation except in regions 
of country where there are refugees and freedmen. It is confined 
t^) those districts of country, and it could not have operation in 
most of the loyal States. But it is desirable, as I am informed, 
and it was so stated by one of the Senators from Maryland, that 
the operations of this bill should be extended to Maryland. It 
may be necessary that it should be extended to Missouri, and 
possibly to Delaware. I trust not ; but the authority to extend 
it there ought to exist, if there should be occasion for it. The 
only objection I have to limiting the operation of the bill to the 
late slaveholding States is, that I think it bad legislation, when 
we are endeavoring to break down discrimination and distinction, 
to pass a law which is to operate in one State of the Union and 



IGO THE THIETY-IKIXTH COJ^'GBESS. 

not in anotlier. I would rather that the law sljould be general, 
a4though I am fully aware that there is nothing for the law to 
operate ujion in most of the States of the Union. I do not fee] 
quite willing to vote upon Kentucky, for instance, a law that I 
am not willing to have applicable to the State of Illinois, if such 
a state of facts exists as that the law can operate in Illinois. I 
prefer, therefore, to have the bill in the shape in which it passed 
the Senate, and such was the opinion of the Committee on the 
Judiciary." 

Mr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, spoke with much feeling uj)on the 
bearings of the bm-eau upon his State: "You will have to ac- 
knowledge these States or you will have to do worse. The 
passage of this system of bills is a dissolution of the Union, and 
you can not help it. It will bfe imj^ossible for you to carry on 
this Government under any such system. When the Union is not 
to be restored, Nvhen there is nothing of that feeling to make the 
people endure, do you suppose they will endure forever?. Do you 
suppose this bill will attach the people in these eleven States more 
thoroughly to the Union than they felt when they reorganized 
their State governments, passed laws manumitting their slaves, 
electing their Legislatures, and doing all that was indicated as 
necessary to be done? Do you suppose that there will ever come 
a time, under this bill, that they will desire to become members 
of this Union once more? I see in this bill exactly how Ken- 
tucky is tolerated here; for as to having part in this legislation, 
when she is charged openly with being ruled at home by rebels, 
our counsels can be of no good here; but still we are not to be 
driven from the Union, and from raising our voice in favor of it, 
and raising it in favor of conciliation and confidence from one 
section to the other. Gentlemen do not get these doctrines of 
hatred and vengeance from the Gospel. These are not the doc- 
trines taught by the Savior of the world. While you cry for 
justice to the African, you are not slow to commit wrong and. 
outrage on the white race. 

"Sir, there "were rebels in all- the States, and will be again 
if you drive these people to desperation. The Senator from 
Massachusetts, if I understood his language aright, threatened us 
with war or worse if we did not yield to his suggestions, and the 
Senator from Indiana intimated very strongly the same thing. 
You have strength enough to carry these measures, if it is the 



THE FBEEDMEJf. IGl 

sentiment of the nation; but we arc not a jjcople to be alarmed 
by words .or threats." 

Mr. Sherman had been, as he said, "during this whole debate, 
rather a sjieetator than a participant." Not desiring to commit 
himself too hastily, he had reserved his opinion that he might 
ict and vote understandingly, without feeling, or prejudice, or 
passion. It was after full reflection that he voted for the bill so 
harshly characterized by the Senator from Kentucky, who had 
evinced a degree of feeling entirely uncalled for. Mr. Sherman 
said further: "I look upon the Freedman's Bureau Bill as sim- 
ply a temporary protection to the freedmen in the Southern States. 
AYe are bound by every consideration of honor, by every obliga- 
tion that can rest on any people, to protect the freedmen from 
the rebels of the. Southern States ; ay, sir, and to protect them 
from the loyal men of the Southern States. We know that, on 
account of the prejudices instilled by the system of slavery per- 
vading all parts of the Southern States, the Southern people will 
not do justice to the freedmen of those States. We know that in 
the course of the. war the freedmen have been emancipated ; that 
they have aided us in this conflict ; and, therefore, we are bound, 
by every consideration of honor, faith, and of public morals, to 
protect and maintain all the essential incidents of freedom to them. 
I have no doubt that in doing this we shall encounter the preju- 
dices not only of rebels, but of loyal men ; but still the obligation 
and guarantee is none the less binding on us. We must maintain 
their freedom, and with it all the incidents and all the rights of 
freedom." 

Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, like the Senator from Ohio, had 
hitherto taken no part in the discussion. He was opposed to the 
limitations placed upon the bill by the House of Eepresentatives. 
"I would not have voted for it if it had not been carried to my 
own State; and if this amendment of the House of Representa- 
tives is to be adopted, I will not vote for the bill. I want the 
bill to be made general. If it is to be made special, if it is to be 
applied to Kentucky only, I appreciate the feeling that drove my 
friend from Kentucky to make the most unfortunate lemark that 
has been made upon the floor of the Senate since 1861. I sin- 
cerely hope, for the good of the country, that the distinguished 
Senator may see fit to take back what he said a few moments ago. 

" Sir, we have had enough of disunion. I hope that no Senator 
11 



162 TEE TEIIiTr-J\''IJVTII COjYGRESS. 

in the future will rise upon this floor and talk, under any circum- 
stances whatever, of another war of rebellion against the consti- 
tuted authorities of this country. My God ! are Ave again to pass 
through the scenes of blood through which we* have passed for the 
last four years ? Are we to have this war repeated ? No Freed- 
men's Bureau Bill, no bill for the ^^rotection of the rights of any 
body, shall ever drive me to dream of such a thing." 

Mr. Henderson thought a better protection for the negro than 
the Freedmen's Bureau would be the ballot. He said: "I live 
in a State that was a slaveholding State until last January a year 
ago. I have been a slaveholder all my life until the day when 
the ordinance of emancipation was passed in my State. I advo- 
cated it, and have advocated emancipation for the last four years, 
at least since this war commenced. Do you want to know how 
to. protect the freedmeit of the Southern States? This bill is use- 
less for that purpose. It is not the intention of the honorable 
Senators on this floor from Northern States, who favor this bill, 
to send military men to plunder the good people of Kentucky. 
It is an attempt to enforce this moral and religious sentiment of 
the people of the Northern States. Sir, these freedmen will be 
protected. The decree of Almighty God has gone forth, as it 
went forth in favor of their freedom originally, that they shall be 
endowed with all the rights that belong to other men. Will you 
protect them? Give them the ballot, INIr. President, and then 
they are protected." 

In reference to the remarks by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Trumbull 
said : " The zeal of my friend from Missouri seems to have run 
away with him. Having come from being a slaveholder to the 
position of advocating universal negro suffrage as the sovereign 
remedy for every thing, he manifests a degree of zeal which I 
have only se^ equaled, I confess, by some of the dicoverers of 
patent medicines who have found a grand specific to cure all dis- 
eases ! Why, he says this bureau is of no account ; give the negro 
the ballot, and that will stop him from starving; that will feed 
him ; that will educate him ! You have got on your hands to- 
day one hundred thousand feeble, indigent, infirm colored popu- 
lation that would starve and die if relief were not afforded ; and 
the Senator from Missouri tells you, ^This is all nonsense; give 
them the right of suffrage, and that is all they want.' This to 
feed the hungry and clothe the naked ! He has voted for these 



THE FUEEBMEK. IGS 

• 
bills ; but if you Avill only just give the right of suffrage, you do 
not want to take care of any starving man, any orphan child, 
any destitute and feeble person that can not take care of himself! 
It is the most sovereign remedy that I have heard of since the 
days of Townsend's Sarsapariila." 

Referring to the feeling manifested by Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Trum- 
bull said: "God forbid that I should put a degradation on tlie 
people of Kentucky. I never thought of such a thing. I would 
sooner cut off my right hand than do such a thing. "What is it 
that so excites and inflames the mind of the Senator from Ken- 
tucky that he talks about the degradation that is to be put upon 
her, the plunder of her people, the injustice that is to be done 
her inhabitants? Why, sir, a bill to help the people of Ken- 
tucky to take care of the destitute negroes, made free without 
any property whatever, without the means of support, left to 
starve and to die unless somebody cares for them; and we pro- 
pose in the Congress of the United States to help to do it. Is 
that a degradation? Is that an injustice? Is that the way to 
rob a people?" 

Mr. McDougall having subsequently obtained the floor, made 
the remark : " I, being a white man, say for the white men and 
white women that they will take care of themselves. This bill 
was not made for white women or white men, or white men and 
women's children." 

This brought out the following statistical statement from Mr. 
Trumbull: "I have before me the official report, which shows 
the consolidated number of rations issued in the different districts 
and States during the month of June, July, August, September, 
and October, 1865. In June there were issued to refugees three 
hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-seven ra- 
tions, and thirty six thousand one hundred and eighty-one to 
freedmen. In August, in Kentucky and Tennessee, there were 
issued to refligees eighty-seven thousand one hundred and eighty 
rations, and to freedmen eighty-seven thousand one hundred and 
ninety-five — almost an equality." 

Mr. Johnson, of Maryland remarked : " The obJQct of the bill 
is a very correct one; these people should be taken care of; and 
as it is equally applicable to the whites and to the blacks, and 
the whites in many of the States requiring as much protection as 
the blacks, I would very willingly vote for the bill if I thought 



164 THE TIIIIiTr-A'IA'TII CONGRESS. 

• 
we had tlie power to pass it ; but on the question of power I 
have no disposition now or perhajjs at any time in the present 
stasre of the bill to trouble the Senate." 

The bill soon after passed the Senate as amended in the House, 
and reiimended in the Senate, by a .vote of twenty-nine to seven. 

On the following day, the amendments of the Senate were con- 
curred in by the House without debate, and the Freedmen's Bu- 
reau Bill was ready to be submitted to the Executive. 

Ten day's after the final passage of the bill, the President sent 
to the Senate a message, "with his objection thereto in writing." 

The Senate immediately suspended other business to hear the 
Veto Message, which was read by the Secretary, as follows : 

'•2b the Senate of the United States : 

"I have examined with care the bill which originated in the Senate, and 
has been passed by the two houses of Congress, to amend an act entitled 
'An act to establish a Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Eefugees,' 
and for other purposes. Having, with much regret, come to the conclusion 
that it would not be consistent with the public welfare to give my approval 
to the measure, I return the bill to the Senate with my objections to its be- 
coming a law. 

"I might call to mind, in advance of these objections, that there is no im- 
mediate necessity for the proposed measure. The act to establish a Bureau 
for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees, which was approved in the month 
of March last, has not yet expired. It was thought stringent and extensive 
enough for the purpose in view in time of war. Before it ceases to have 
effect, furtlier experience may assist to guide us to a wise conclusion as to 
the policy to be adopted in time of peace. 

"I share with Congress the stroiigest desire to secure to the freedmen 
the full enjoyment of their freedom and property, and their entire indepen- 
dence and equaHty in making contracts for their labor ; but the bill before 
me contains provisions which, in my opinion, are not warranted by the Con- 
stitution, and are not well suited to accomplish the end in view. 

"The bin proposes to establish by authority of Congress, military juris- 
diction over all parts of the United States containing refugees and freedmen. 
It would, by its very nature, apply with mo^t force to those parts of the 
United States in which the freedmen most abound; anft it expressly extends 
the existing temporary jurisdiction of the Freedmen's Bureau, with greatly 
enlarged powers, over those States 'in which the ordinary course of judicial 
proceeding, has Jbeen interrupted by the rebellion.' The source from which 
this military jurisdiction is to emanate is none other than the President of 
the United States, acting through the War Department and the commissioner 
of the Freedmen's Bureau. The agents to carry out this military jurisdic- 
tion are to be solccted either from the army or from civil life; the country 
is to be divided into districts and sub-districts; and the number of salaried 



TEE FREEDMEjY. 1G5 

agents to be employed may bo equal to the number of counties or parishes 
in all the United States where frecdmcn and refugees are to be found. 

"The subjects over which this military jurisdiction is to extend in every 
part of the United Spates include protection to 'all employes, agents, and 
officers of this bureau in the exercise of the duties imposed ' upon them by 
the bill. In eleven States it is further to extend over all cases affecting 
frecdmen and refugees discriminated against ' by local law, custom, or*prej- 
udice.' In those eleven States the bill subjects any white person who may 
be chargctl with depriving a freedman of ' any civil rights or immunities 
belonging to white persons ' to imprisonment or -fine, or both, without, how- 
ever, defining the ' civil rights and immunities ' which are thus to be secured 
to the frecdmen by military law. This military jurisdiction also extends to 
all questions that may arise respecting contracts. The agent who is thus to 
exercise the office of a military judge may be a stranger, entirely ignorant 
of the laws of the place, and exposed to the errors of judgment to which all 
men are liable. The exercise of power, over which there is no legal super- 
vision, by so vast a number of agents as is conternplated by the bill, must, 
by the very nature of man, be attended by acts of caprice, injustice, and 
passion. 

"The trials, having their origin under this bill, are to take place without 
the intervention of a jury, and without any fixed rules of law or evidence. 
The rules on which offenses are to be ' heard and determined ' by the nu- 
merous agents, are such rules and regulations as the President, through the 
War Department, shall prescribe. No previous presentment is required, 
nor any indictment charging the commission of a crime against the laws ; 
but the trial must proceed on charges and specifications. The punishment 
will be, not what the law declares, but such as a court-martial may think 
proper; and from these arbitrary tribunals there lies no appeal, no writ of 
error to any of the courts in which the Constitution of the United States 
vests exclusively the judicial power of the country. 

"While the territory and the classes of actions and offenses that are made 
subject to this measure are so extensive, the bill itself, should it become a 
law, will have no limitation in point of time, but will form a part of the 
permanent legislation of the country. I can not reconcile a system of mili- 
tary jurisdiction of this kind with the words of the Constitution, which de- 
clare that 'no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise 
infamous crime unless upon a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, 
except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or in the militia when 
. in actual service in time of war or public danger;' and that 'in all crim- 
inal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public 
trial, by an impartial jury of the State or district wherein the crime shall 
have been committed.' The safeguards which the experience and wisdom 
of ages taught our fathers to establish as securities for the protection of the 
innocent, the punishment of the guilty, and the equal administration of 
justice, are to be set aside, and for the sake of a more vigorous interposition 
in behalf of justice, we are to take the risk of the many acts of injustice 
that would necessarily follow from an almost countless number of agents 
established in every parish or county in nearly a third of the States of the 



166 THE THIRTY-J^'UVTH COJTGBESS. 

Union, over whose decisions there is to be no supervision or control by the 
Federal courts. The power that would be thus placed in the hands of the 
President is such as in time of peace certainly ought never to be intrusted 
to any one man. 

"If it be asked whether the creation of such a tribunal within a State is 
warranted as a measure of war, the question immediately presents itself 
whetjier we are still engaged in war. Let us not unnecessarily disturb the 
commerce and credit and industry of the country by declaring to the Amer- 
ican .people and to the world, that the Uuited States are still in a condition- 
of civil war. At present there is no part of our country in which the au- 
thority of the United States is disputed. Offenses that may be committed 
by individuals should not work a forfeiture of the rights of whole commu- 
nities. The country has r<jturned, or is returning, to a state of peace and 
industry, and the rebellion is in fact at an end. The measure, therefore, 
seems to be as inconsistent with the actual condition of the country as it is 
at variance with the Constitution of the United States. 

"If, passing from general considerations, we examine the bill in detail, 
it is open to weighty objections. 

" In time of war it was eminently proper that we should provide for those 
who were passing suddenly from a cofltlition of bondage to a state of free- 
dom. But this bill proposes to make the Freedmen's Bureau, established by 
the act of 1865 as one of many great and extraordinary military measures to 
suppress a formidable rebellion, a permanent branch of the public adminis- 
tration, with its powers greatly enlarged. I have no reason to suppose, and I 
do not understand it to be alleged, that the act of March, 1865, has proved 
deficient for the purpose for which it was passed, although at that time, 
and for a considerable period thereafter, the . Government of the United 
States remained unacknowledged in most of*the States whose inhabitants 
had been involved in the rebellion. The institution of slavery, for the mili- 
tary destruction of which the Freedmen's Bureau was called into existence as 
an auxiliary, has been already efiectually and finally abrogated throughout 
the whole country by an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, 
and practically its eradication has received the assent and concurrence of 
most of those States in which it at any time had an existence. ,1 am not, 
therefore, able to discern, in the condition of the country, any thing to jus- 
tify an apprehension that the powers and agencies of the Freedmen's Bu- 
reau, which were effective for the protection of freedmen and refugees dur- 
ing the actual continuance of hostilities and of African servitude, will now, 
in a time of peace and after the abolition of slavery, prove inadequate to 
the same proper ends. If I am correct in these views, there can be no ne- 
cessity for the enlargement of the powers of the bureau, for which provision 
is made in the bill. 

" The third section of the bill authorizes a general and unlimited grant 
of support to the destitute and sufi"ering refugees and freedmen, their wives 
and children. Succeeding sections make provision for the rent or purchase 
of landed estates for freedmen, and for the erection for their benefit of suit- 
able buildings for asylums and schools, the expenses to be defrayed from 
the Treasury of the whole people. The Congress of the United States has 



THE FREED ME J^. 167 

never heretofore thought itself empowered to establish asylums beyond the 
limits of the District of Columbia, except for the benefit of our disabled 
soldiers and sailors. It has never founded schools for any class of our own 
people, not even for the orphans of those who have fallen in the defense of 
the Union ; but has left the care of education to the muclk more competent 
and efficient control of the States, of communities, of private associations, 
and of individuals. It has never deemed itself authoi-ized to expend the 
public money for the rent or purchase of homes for the thousands, not to 
say millions, of the white race, who are honestly toiling from day to day 
for their subsistence. A system for the support of indigent persons in the 
United States was never contemplated by the authors of the Constitution, 
nor can any good reason be advamced why, as a permanent establishment, 
if should be founded for one class or color of our people more than another. 
Pending the war, many refugees and frccdmen received support from the 
Government, but it was never intended that they should thenceforth be fed, 
clothed, educated, and sheltered by the United States. The idea on which 
the slaves were assisted to freedom was that, on becoming free, they would 
be a self-sustaining population. Any legislation that shall imply that they 
are not expected to attain a self-sustaining condition must have a tendency 
injurious alike to their character and their prospects. 

"The appointment of an agent for every county and parish will create an 
immense patronage; and the expense of the numerous officers and their 
clerks, to be appointed by the President, will be great in the beginning, 
with a tendency steadily to increase. The appropriations asked by the 
Freedmen's Bureau, as now established, for the year 1866, amount to 
$11,745,000. It may be safely estimated that the cost to be incurred under 
the pending bill will require double that amount — more than the entire 
sum expended in any one year under the administration of the second 
Adams. If the presence of agents in every parish and county is to be con- 
sidered as a war measure, opposition, or even resistance, might be pro- 
voked, so that, to give effect to their jurisdiction, troops would have to be 
stationed within reach of every one of them, and thus a large standing 
force be rendered necessary. Large appropriations would therefore be re- 
required to sustain and enforce military jurisdiction in every county or 
parish from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The condition of our fiscal, 
affairs is encouraging, but, in order to sustain the present measure of pub- 
lic confidence, it is necessary that we practice not merely customary econ- 
omy, but, as far as possible, severe retrenchment. , 

"In addition to the objections already stated, the fifth section of the bill 
proposes to take away land from its former owners without any legal pro- 
ceedings being first had, contrary to that provision of the Constitution which 
declares that no person shall ' be deprived of life, liberty, or property, with- 
out due process of law.' It does not appear that a part of the lands to which 
this section refers may not be owned by minors or persons of unsound mind, 
or by those who have been f\iithful to all their obligations as citizens of the 
United States. If any portion of the land is held by such persons, it is not 
competent for any authority to deprive them of it. If, on .the other hand, 
it be found that the property is liable«to confiscation, even then it can not 



168 TEE THIRTY-KIMTH CONGRESS. 

be appropriated to public purposes until, by due process of law, it shall 
have been declared forfeited to the Government. 

"There is still further objection to the bill on grounds seriously affecting 
the class of persons to whom it is designed to bring relief; it will tend to 
keep the mind of. the freedman in a state of uncertain expectation and rest- 
lessness, while to those among whom he lives it will be a source of constant 
and vague apprehension. 

"Undoubtedly the freedman should be protected, but he should be pro- 
tected by the civil authorities, especially by the exercise of all the constitu- 
tional powers of the courts of the United States and of the States. His 
condition is not so exposed as may at first be imagined. He is in a portion 
of the country where his labor can not well be spared. Competition for 
his services from planters, from those who are constructing or repairiifg 
railroads, and from capitalists in his vicinage or from other States, will en- 
able him to command almost his own terms. He also possesses a perfect 
right to change his place of abode; and if, therefore, he does not find in 
one community or State a mode of life suited to his desires, or proper re- 
muneration for his labor, he can move to another, wkere that labor is more 
esteemed and better rewarded. In truth, however, each State, induced by 
its own wants and interests, will do what is necessary and proper to retain 
within its borders all the labor that is needed for the development of its 
resources. The laws that regulate supply and demand will maintain their 
force, and the wages of the laborer will be regulated thereby. There is no 
danger that the exceedingly great demand for labor will not operate in favor 
of th^ laborer. • 

"Neither is sufficient consideration given to the ability of the freedmen 
to protect and take care of themselves. It is no more than justice to them 
to believe that, as they have received their freedom with moderation and 
forbearance, so they will distinguish themselves by their industry and thrift, 
and soon show the world that, in a condition of freedom, they are self-sus- 
taining, capable of selecting their own cmiiloyment and their own places 
of abode, of insisting for themselves on a proper remuneration, and of es- 
tablishing and maintaining their own asylums and schools. It is earnestly 
hoped that, instead of wasting away, they will, by their own efforts, estab- 
lish for themselves a condition of respect, ability, and prosperity. It is 
certain that they can attain to that condition only through their own merits 
and exertions. 

"In this connection the query presents itself, whether the system pro- 
posed by the bill will not, when put into complete operation, practically 
transfer the entire care, support, and control of four million emancipated 
slaves to agents, overseers, or task-masters, who, appointed at Washington, 
are to be located in every county and parish throughout the United States 
containing freedmen and refugees ? Such a system would inevitably tend 
to a concentration of power in the Executive which would enable him, if so 
disposed, to control' the action of this numerous class and use them for the 
attainment of his own political ends. 

"I can not but add another very grave objection to this bill: The Consti- 
tution imperatively declares, in connection with taxation, that each State 



THE FEEEBMEK. 169 

shall have at least one Rcprcsentatlvo, and Gxcs the rule for the number to 
which, in future times, each State shall be entitled. It also provides that 
the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from 
each State, and adds, with peculiar force, 'that no State, without its eon- 
sent, shaU be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.' The original 
act was necessarily passed in the absence of the States chiefly to be af- 
fected, because their people were then contumaciously engaged in the re- 
belliortfe Now the case is changed, and some, at least, of those States are 
attending Congress by loyal Representatives, soliciting the allowance «f the 
constitutional right of representation. At the time, however, of the consid- 
eration and the passing of this bill, there was no Senator or Representative 
in Congress from the eleven States which are to be mainly affected by its 
provisions. The very foct that reports were and are made against the good 
disposition of the people of that portion of the country is an additional reason 
why they need, and should have. Representatives of their own in Congress to 
explain their condition, reply to accusations, and assist,, by their local knowl- 
edge, in the perfecting of measures immediately affecting themselves. While 
the liberty of deliberation would then be free, and Congress would have full 
power to decide according to its judgment, there could be no objection urged 
that the States most interested had not been permitted to be heard. The 
principle is firmly fixed in the minds of the American people that there 
should be no taxation without representation. 

" Great burdens have- now to be borne by all the country, and we may 
best demand that they shall be borne without murmur when they are voted 
by a majority of the Represetatives of all the people. I would not inter- 
fere with the unquestionable right of Congress to judge, each house for 
itself, ' of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members,' but 
that authority can not be construed as including the right to shut out, in 
time of peace, any State from the representation to which it is entitled by 
the Constitution. At present, all the people of eleven States are excluded — 
those who were mogt faithful during the war not less than others. The 
State of Tennessee, for instance, whose authorities engaged in rebellion, 
was restored to all her constitutional relations to the Union by the patriot- 
ism and energy of her injured and betrayed people. Before the war 'was 
brought to a termination, they had placed themselves in relation with the 
General Government, hail established a State government of their own; as 
tiiey were not included in the Emancipation Proclamation, they, by their 
own act, had amended their Constitution so as to abolish slavery within 
the limits of their State. I know no reason why the State of Tennessee, 
for example, should not fully enjoy; 'all her constitutional relations to the 
United States.' 

"The President of the United States stands toward- the country in a some- 
what different attitude from that of any member of Congress. Each mem- 
ber of Congress is chosen from a single district or State; the President is 
chosen by .the people of all the States. As eleven are not at this time rep- 
resented in either branch of Congress, it would seem to be his duty, on all 
proper occasions, to present their just claims to Congress. There always 
will be differences of opinion in the community, and individuals may be 



170 THE TEIRTY-jYIjYTH. CO JV GUESS. 

be guilty of transgressions of the law; but these do not constitute valid 
objections against tlic right of a State to representation. I would in nowise 
interfere with the discretion of Congress with regard to the qualifications 
of members; but I hold it my duty to recommend to you, in the interests 
of peace and in the interests of union, the admission of every State to its 
share in public legislation when, however insubordinate, insurgent, or re- 
bellious its people may have been, it presents itself, not only in an attitucle 
of loyalty and harmony, but in the persons of Representatives whc^ loy- 
alty Qfln not be questioned under any existing constitutional or legal test. 

"It is plain that an indefinite or permanent exclusion of any part of the 
country from representation must be attended, by a spirit of disquiet and 
complaint. It is unwise and dangerous to pursue a course of measures 
which will unite a very large section of the country against another section 
of the country, however much the latter may preponderate. The course of 
emigration, the development of industry and business, and natural causes will 
raise up at the South men as devoted to the Union as those of any other 
part of the land. But if they are all excluded from Congress — if, in a per- 
manent statute, they 'are declared not to be in full constitutional relations 
to the country — they may think they have cause to become a unit in feeling 
and sentiment against the Government. Under the political education of 
the American people, the' idea is inherent and ineradicable that the con- 
sent of the majority of the whole people is necessary to secure a willing 
acquiescence in legislation. . ■ , 

"The bill under consideration refers to certain of -the States as though 
they had not 'been fully restored in all their constitutional relations to the 
United States.' If they have not, let us at once act together to secure that 
desirable end at the earliest possible moment. It is hardly necessary for me 
to inform Congress that, in my own judgment, most of these States, so far, 
at least, as depends upon their own action, have already been fully restored, 
and are to be deemed as entitled to enjoy their constitutional rights as mem- 
bers of the Union. Reasoning from the Constitution itself, and from the 
actual situation of the country, I feel not only entitled but bound to as- 
sume that, with the Federal courts restored, and those of the several States 
in the full exercise of tteir functions, the rights and interests of all classes 
of the people will, with the aid of the military in cases of resistance to the 
laws, be essentially protected against unconstitutioq|il infringement or viola- 
tion. Should this expectation unhappily fail — which I do not anticipate — 
then the Executive is already fully armed with the powers conferred by the 
act of March, 1S65, establishing the Freedmen's Bureau, and hereafter, as 
heretofore, he. can employ the land and naval forces of the country to sup- 
press insurrection or to overcome obstructions to the laws. 

"In accordance with the Constitution, I return "the bill to the Senate, in 
the earnest hope that a measure involving questions and interests so im- 
portant to the country will not become a law unless, upon deliberate con- 
sideration by the people, it shall receive the sanction of an enlightened 

public iudgmcnt. 

^ "ANDREW JOHNSON." 




'^^ 



■^-VGEJfermeSC'S''^ 




^^^^^<J.^,^ 



:u:)N .if: roiviEi-vjjy 

IJKNATOR FBOM KAWSAS. 



TEE FBEEDMEJf. . ' 171 

The majority of the Senate was in favor of proceeding imme- 
diately to the consideration of the message, and to have a vote as • 
to whether the bill should be passed, " the objections of the Presi- 
dent to the contrary notwithstanding." To this Mr. Lane, of 
Kansas, was opposed. He said : " There are several Senators 
absent, and I think it but just to them that they should have an 
opportunity to be present when the vote is taken on this bill. I 
can not consent, so long as I can postpone this question by the 
rules of the Senate, to have a vote upon it to-night." Mr. Lane 
accordingly made four successive motions to adjourn, in each of 
■ which he called for the yeas and nays. Finally, the motion for 
adjournment having been made for the fifth time, it was carried, 
with the understanding that the bill should be the pending ques- 
tion at one o'clock on. the following day. 

On that day, February 20th, the bill and the message came 
duly before the Senate, Mr. Davis -obtained the floor, and made 
a long speech in opposition to the bill and in favor of the? Veto 
Message. He expressed his aversion to the bill, and the objects 
sought to be attained under it in very emphatic terms, but added 
nothing to the argumente w^hich had already been adduced. 

Mr. Trumbull replied to the objections urged against the bill 
in the President's Message. The President said, "The bill, 
should it become a law will have no limitation in point of time, 
.but will form a part of the permanent legislation of the country." 

"The object of the bill," replied Mr. Trumbull, "was to con- 
tinue in existence the Freedmen's Bureau — not as a permanent in- 
stitution. Any such intent was disavowed during the discussion of 
the bill. It is true, no time is expressly limited in the bill itself 
when it shall cease to operate, nor is it customary to insert such* 
a clause in a law; but it is declared that the bill shall operate 
mitil otherwise provided by law. It is known that the Congress 
of the United States assembles every year, and no one supposed 
that this bill was to establish a bureau to be ingrafted upon the 
country as a permanent institution ; far from it. Nor is it a bill 
that is intended to go into the States and take control of the do- 
mestic affairs of the States." 

"There is no irnmediate necessity for the proposed measure," 
said the President ; " the act to establish a Bureau for the Relief 
of- Freedmen aird Refugees, which was approved in the mouth of 



172 . ' THE TJIIBTr-JfljYTH COJ^'GBESS. 

March last, has not yet expired. It was thought stringent and 
extensive enough for tlie purpose in view in time of war." 

Mr. Trumbull replied : " By the terms of the act, it was to con- 
tinue ' during the present war of rebellion and for one year there- 
after.' Now, when did the war of rebellion cease ? So far as the 
conflict of arms is concerned, we all admit that the war of 'rebell- 
ion ceased when the last rebel army laid down its arms, and that 
was some time in the month of May, when the rebel army in 
Texas surrendered to the Union forces. T do not hold that the 
consequences of the war are oyer. I do not understand that 
peace is restored with all* its consequences. We have not yet 
escaped from the evils inflicted by the war. Peace and harmony 
are not yet restored, but the war of rebellion is over, and this 
bureau must expire in May next, according to the terms of the 
act that was passed on the 3d of March, 1865, and according to 
the views of the President as expressed in his Veto Message." 

" The bill," said the President, " proposes to establish by author- 
ity of Congress, military jurisdiction over all parts of the United 
States containing refugees and freedmen." 

" I would like to know," said Mr. Trumbull, " where in that 
bin is any provision extending military jurisdiction over all parts 
of the United States containing refugees and freedmen ? The bill 
contains no such clause. It is a misapprehension of the bill. 
The clause of the bill upon that subject is this : * 

" 'And the President of the United States, through the "War Department 
and the commissioner, shall extend military jurisdiction and protection over 
all employes, age.nts, and officers of this bureau in the exercise of the duties 
imposed or authorized by this act or the act to which this is additional.' 

"Is not the diiference manifest to every body between a bill 
that extends military jurisdiction over the officers and employes 
of the bureau and a bill which should extend military jurisdiction 
over all parts of the United States containing refugees and freed- 
men ? This bill makes the Freedmen's Bureau a part of the War 
Department. It makes its officers" and agents amenable to the 
Rules and Articles of War. But does that extend jurisdiction 
over the whole country where they are? How do they differ from 
any other portion of the army of the United States ? The army 
of the United States, as every one knows, is governed by the 
Rules and Articles of War, wherever it may be, whether in Indi- 



THE FBEEDMEJ^. 17 S 

ana or in Florida, and all persons in the army and a part of the 
military establishment are siibjcet to these Rules and Articles of 
War ; but did any body ever suppose that the whole country where 
they were Avas under military jurisdiction? If a company of sol- 
diers* are stationed at one of the forts in New York harbor, the 
officers and soldiers of that company are subject to military juris- 
diction ; but was it ever supposed that the people of the State of 
New York were thereby placed under military jurisdiction? It 
is an entire misapprehension of the provisions of the bill. It ex- 
tends military jurisdiction nowhere; it merely places under juris- 
diction the persons belonging to the Frecdmcn's Bureau who, 
nearly all of them, are now under militarj^ jurisdiction." 

' " The country," objected the Prcsideijt, " is to be divided into 
districts and sub-districts, and the number of salaried agents to 
be employed may be equal to the number of counties or parishes 
in all the States where freedmen and refugees are to be found." 

Mr. Trumbull replied : "A single officer need not be employed 
other than those we now have. I have already stated that it is 
in the power and discretion of the President to detail from the 
army officers to perform all the duties. of the Freedmen's Bureau, 
and, in case they are detailed, the bill provides that they shall 
serve without any additional compensation or allowance. But, 
sir, is it necessary, or was it ever contemplated, that there should 
be an officer or agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in every county 
and every parish where refugees and freedmen are to be found? 
By no mteans. What is the bill upon that subject? Does it 
make it imperative upon the President to appoint an agent in 
each county and parish? It authorizes hirft 'when the same 
shall be necessary for the operations of the bureau;' not other- 
wise. He has no authority, under the bill, to appjDoint a single 
agent unless it is necessary for the operations of the bureau, and 
then he can only appoint so many as may be needed. Sir, it 
never entered the mind, I venture to say, of a single advocate 
of this bill, that the President of the United States would so 
abuse the authority intrusted -to him as to station an agent in 
every county in these States; but it was apprehended that there 
might be localities in some of these States where the prejudice 
and hostility of the white population and the former masters 
were such toward the negroes that it would be necessary to 
have an agent in every county in that locality for their protec- 



174 THE THIBTY-MIMTH COJ^GRESS. 

tion; aud, iu order to give the President the necessary discre- 
tion where this should be requisite, the bill authorized, when it 
was -necessary for the operations of the bureau, the appointment 
of an agent in each county or parish. In order to vest the Pres- 
ident Avith sufficient power in some localities, it was necessary, 
legislating by general law, to give him much larger power than 
would be necessary in other localities. 

" Sir, the country is not to be divided^ I undertake to say, 
into districts and sub-districts unless the President of the United 
States finds it necessary to do so for the protection of these peo- 
ple ; and if the law should be abused in that respect, it would be 
because he abused the discretion vested in him by Congress, and 
'. not because the law required it. It makes no such requirement." 

"This military jurisdiction," said the President, "also extends 
to all questions that may arise respecting contracts." 

" So far," replied Mr. Trumbull, " from extending this military 
jurisdiction over all questions arising concerning contracts, and 
so far from extending military jurisdiction anywhere, it is ex- 
pressly provided, by the very terms of the bill, that no such juris- 
diction shall be exercised except where the President himself has 
established and is maintaining military jurisdiction, which he is 
now doing in eleven States ; and the very moment that he ceases to 
maintain military jurisdiction, that very moment the military juris- 
diction conferred over freedmen by this act ceases and terminates. 

"Sir, the whole jurisdiction to try and dispose of cases by the 
officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau is expressiy limited 
to the time when these States shall be restored to their constitu- 
tional relations, aiM when the courts of the United States and 
of tiie States are not interrupted nor interfered with in the peace- 
able course of justice. So far, then, from the bill establishing a 
military jurisdiction, upon which the Senator from Kentucky 
and other Senators have so much harped, it confers no jurisdic- 
tion to try cases one moment after the courts are restored, and 
are no longer interrupted in the peaceable administration of jus- 
tice. Let me ask by what authority is it that military tribunals 
are sitting to-day at Alexandria, Virginia? By what authority 
is it that the writ of habeas corpus is suspended to-day in eleven 
States, when the Constitution of the United States says that the 
writ shall not be suspended except when, in cases of rebellion 
and invasion, the public safety may require it. By what author- 



THE FREEDMEJf. 175 

ity dosG the President of the United States object to the exercise 
of military jurisdiction by that part of the army charged with 
the execution of the provisions of the Frcedmen's Bureau when 
he exercises that military jurisdiction himself by other portions 
of the army? But a few days since a military cominission was 
sitting in Alexandria, trying persons charged with crimes — and 
they are held all over the South — and yet that part of the army 
connected with the Frcedmen's Bureau can not exercise any such 
authority because it is unconstitutional — unconstitutional to do 
by virtue of a law of Congress what is* done without any law! 

"Where does the Executi%*6 get the power? The Executive 
is but the Commander-in-chief of the armies, made so by the 
Constitution; but he can not raise an army or a single soldier, 
he can not appoint a single officer, without the consent of Con- 
gress. He can not make any rules and regulations for the gov- « 
ernment of the army without our permission. The Constitution 
of the United States declares, in so many words, that Congress 
shall have power ' to make rules for the government and regula- 
tion of the land and naval forces ' of the United States. Can it 
be that that department of the Government, vested in express 
terms by the Constitution itself with authority to make rules for 
the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, has 
no authority to direct that portion of the land and naval forces 
employed in the Frcedmen's Bureau to exercise this jurisdiction 
instead of department commanders? Sir, it is competent for 
Congress to declare that no department commanders shall exer- " 
cise any such authority; it is competent for Congress to declare 
that a court-martial shall never sit, that a military commission 
shall never be held, and the President is as much bound to 
obey it as the humblest citizen in the land." 

The President said : " The trials having their origin under this 
bill are to take place without the intervention of a jury, and 
without any fixed rules of law or evidence." 

" Do not all military trials take place in that way," asked Mr. 
Trumbull. " Did any body ever hear of the presentment of a 
grand jury in a case where a court-martial set for the trial of a 
military oifense, or the trial of a person charged with any offense 
cognizable before it? This Frcedmen's Bureau Bill confers no 
authority to do this except in those regions of country where 
military authority prevails, where martial law is established, 



176 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

where persons exercising civil authority act in subordination to 
the military power, and where the moment they transcend the 
proper limits as fixed by military orders, they are liable to be 
arrested and punished without the intervention of a grand jury, 
or without the right of appeal to any of the judicial tribunals of 
the country. I would as soon think of an appeal from the decis- 
ion of the military tribunal that sat in the city of AVashington, 
and condemned to death the murderers of our late President, to 
the judicial tribunals of the country! Where military authority 
bears sway, where the courts are overborne, is it not an -absurd- 
ity to say that you must have a presentment of a grand jury, 
and a trial in a court." 

" I can not reconcile a system of military jurisdiction of this 
kind with the words of the Constitution," said the President. 

" If you can not reconcile a system of military jurisdiction of 
this, kind with the words of the Constitution, why have you been 
exercising it," asked Mr. Trumbull. " Why have you been or- 
ganizing courts-martial and military commissions all over the 
South, trying offenders, and punishing some of them with death? 
Why have you authorized the present Frcedmen's Bureau to hold 
bureau courts all through the South ? This has all been done by 
your permission, and is being done to-day. Then, sir, if you are 
still in the exercise of this power now, if you have been exercis- 
ing it from the day you became President of the United States, 
how is it that you can not reconcile a system of jurisdiction of 
this kind with the words of the Constitution ? 

"Sir, does it detract from the President's authority to have 
the sanction of law? I want to give that sanction. I do not 
object to the exercise of this military authority of the President 
in the rebellious States. I believe it is constitutional and legiti- 
mate and necessary; but I believe Congress has authority to 
regulate it. I believe Congress has authority to direct that this 
military jurisdiction shall be exercised by that branch of the 
army known as the Freedmen's Bureau, as well as by any other 
branch of the army." 

"The rebellion is at an end," said the President. "The 

measure, therefore, seems to be as inconsistent with the actual 

condition of the country as it is at variance with the Constitution 

of the United States." 

. ]\rr. Trumbull replied : " If the rebeljion is at an end, will any 



THE FREEDMEJT. 177 

body tell nic by what authority the President of the United States 
suspends the writ of habeas corpus in those States where it existed. 
The act of Congress of March, 1863, authorized the President of 
the United States to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during the 
present rebellion. He says it is at an end. By what authority, 
then, does he suspend the writ? By his own declaration, let 
him stand or fall. If it is competent to suspend the writ, if it 
is competent for military tribunals to sit all through the South, 
and entertain military jurisdiction, this bill, which does not con- 
tinue military jurisdiction, docs not establish military jurisdiction, 
but only authorizes tlie officers of this bureau, while military 
jurisdiction prevails, to take charge of that particular class of 
cases aflecting the refugee or freedman where he is discriminated 
against, can not be obnoxious to any constitutional objection." 

" This bill," said the President, " proposes to make the Freed- 
mcn's Bureau, established by the act of 1865, as one of many 
great and extraordinary military measures to suppress a formida- 
ble rebellion, a permanent branch of the public administration, 
with its powers greatly enlarged." 

" This is a mistake," replied Mr. TAmbull ; " it is not intended, 
I apprehend, by any body, certainly not by me, to make it a 
permanent branch of the public administration ; and I am quite 
sure that the powers of the bureau are not, by the amendatory 
bill, greatly enlarged. A careful examination of the amendment 
will show that it is in some respects a restriction on the powers 
already exercised." 

" The third section of the bill," the President objected, "au- 
thorizes a general and unlimited grant of support to the des- 
titute and suffering refugees and freedmen, their wives and 
children." 

" Wliat is the third section of the bill," asked Mr. Trumbull, 
" which the President says contains feuch an unlimited grant of 
support to the destitute and suifering refugees, their wives and 
children ? I will read that third section : 

" ' That the Secretary of War may direct such issues of i^rovisions, cloth- 
ing, fuel, including medical stores and transportation, and afford such aid, 
medical or otherwise, as he may deem needful for the immediate and tem- 
porary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen, 
their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct : 
Provided, That no person shall be deemed "destitute," "suffering," or 
12 



17S THE TEIRTY-NIJ^'TR COMGRESS. 

" dependent upon the Government for support," within the meaning of this 
act, who, being able to find employment, could, by proper industry and exer- 
tion, avoid such destitution, suffering, or dependence.' 

"Does tlic President object to this bill on the ground that 
it authorizes medical aid to be furnished the sick ? Or does he 
object to it because of the proviso which limits its operation, and 
declares that nobody shall be deemed destitute and suffering un- 
der the provisions of the act who is able, by proper industry and 
exertion, to avoid such destitution? Why, sir, it is a limitation 
on. the present existing law. Does that look much like taking 
care of four million of people — a provision that expressly limits 
the operations of this act to those only who can not find employ- 
ment? A statement of the fact is all that is necessary to meet 
this statement in the Veto Message." 

" The Congress of the United States," said the President, " has 
never heretofore thought itself empowered to establish asylums 
beyond the limits of the District of Columbia, except for the bene- 
fit of our disabled soldiers and sailors. It has never founded 
schools for any class of our own people. It has never deemed it- 
self authorized to expend the pviblic money for the rent or purchase 
of homes for the thousands, not to say millions of the white race 
who are honestly toiling from day to day for their subsistence." 

" The answer to that is this," said Mr. Trumbull : " We never be- 
fore were in such a state as now ; never before in the history of this 
Government did eleven States of the Union combine together to 
overthrow and destroy the Union ; never before in the history of 
this Government have we had a four years' civil war ; never before 
in the history of this Government have nearly four million peo- 
ple been emancipated from the most abject and degrading slavery 
ever imposed upon human beings ; never before has the occasion 
arisen when it was necessary to provide for such large numbers 
of people thrown upon the bounty of the Government unpro- 
tected and unprovided for. But, sir, wherever the necessity did 
exist the Government has acted. We have voted hundreds of 
thousands and millions of dollars, and are doing it from year to 
year, to take care of and provide for the destitute and suffering 
Indians. We appropriated, years ago, hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to take care of and feed the savage African who was 
landed upon our coast by slavers. We provided by law that 
whenever savages from Africa should be brought to our shores, 



THE FREEBMEJ^. 170 

or whenever tlicy should be caiitured on board of slavers, the 
President of the United States should make provision for their 
maintenance and support, for five years, on the coast of Africa. 
He was authorized by law to appoint agents to go to Africa to 
provide means to feed them, and we paid the money to do it. 
And yet, sir, can \ve not provide for these Africans who have 
been held in bondage all their lives, who have never been per- 
mitted to earn one dollar for themselves, who, by the great Con- 
stitutional Amendment declaring freedom throughout the land, 
have been discharged from bondage to their masters, who had 
hitherto provided for their necessities in consideration of their 
services? Can we not provide for these destitute persons of our 
own land on the same principle that we provide for the Indians, 
that we provide for the savage African ? " 

" But," continued ]Mi\ Trumbull, " the President says we have 
never rented lands for the white race, we have never purchased 
lands for them. What do we propose to do by this bill ? This 
authorizes, if the President thinks proper to do it — it is in his 
discretion — the purchase or renting of lands on which to place 
these indigent people ; but before any land can be purchased or 
rented, before any contract can be made on the subject, there 
must be an appropriation made by Congress. This bill con- 
tains no appropriation. If the President is opposed to the rent 
or pm^chase of land, and Congress passes a bill ajapropriating 
money for that purpose, let him veto it if he thinks it unconsti- 
tutional ; but there is nothing unconstitutional in this bill. This 
bill does not purchase any land ; but it prevents even a contract 
on the subject until another law shall be passed appropriating the 
money for that purpose, 

" But, sir, what is the objection to it if it did appropriate the 
money? I have already undertaken to show, and I think I have 
shown, that it was the duty of the United States, as an indepen- 
dent nation, as one of the powers of the earth, whenever there 
came into its possession an unprotected class of people, who must 
suffer and perish but for its care, to provide for and take care of 
them. When an army is marching through an enemy's country, 
and poor and destitute persons are found within its lines who 
must die by starvation if they are not fed from the supplies of the 
army, will any body show me the constitutional provision or the 
act of Congress that authorizes the general commanding to open 



180 THE TEIETY-MIJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

his commissariat and feed the starving multitude? And has it 
not been done by every one of your commanders all through the 
South? "Whenever a starving human being, man, woman, or 
child, no matter whether black or white, rebel or loyal, came 
within the lines of the army, to perish and die unless fed from 
our supplies, there has never been an officer in our service, and, 
thank God ! there has not been, who did not relieve the sufferer. 
If you want to know where the constitutional power to do this 
is, and where the law is, I answer, it is in that common humanity 
that belongs to every man fit to bear the name, and it is in that 
power that belongs to us as a Christian nation, carrying on war 
upon civilized principles. 

" If we had the right then to feed those people as we did, have 
we not the right to take care of them in the cheapest way we 
can? If, when General Sherman was passing through Georgia, 
he found the lands abandoned ; if their able-bodied owners had 
entered the rebel army to fight against us; if the women and 
children had fled and left the land a waste, and he had, as is the 
fact, thousands of persons hanging upon his army dependent upon 
him for supplies ; if it was believed that it would be cheaper to 
support these people upon these lands than to buy provisions to 
feed them, might we not do so ? May we not resort to whatever 
means is most judicious to protect from starvation that multitude 
which common humanity requires us to feed ? 

" Nor, sir, is it true that no provision has been made by Con- 
gress for the education of white people. AVe have given all 
through the new States one section of land in every township for 
the benefit of common schools. We have donated hundreds of 
thousands of acres of land to all the States for the establishment 
of colleges and seminaries of learning. How did we get this 
land? It was purchased by our money, and then we gave it 
away for purposes of education. The same right exists now to 
provide for these people, and it. is not simply for the black peo- 
ple, but for the white refugees as well as the black, that this bill 
provides." 

Said the President : " The appropriations asked by the Freed- 
men's Bureau, as now established, for the year 1866, amounts to 
$11,745,000. It may be safely estimated that the cost to be in- 
curred under the pending bill will require double that amount." 
Mr. Trumbull replied : " A far larger sum, in proportion to the 



THE FREED MEK. ISl 

number that were thrown upon onr hands, was expended before 
the creation of the Frccdmcn's Bureau, in feeding and taking care 
of refugees and freedmen, than since the establishment of the 
Frecdmen'.s Bureau. Since that time, the authority of the Gov- 
ernment has been extended over all the rebellious States, and wb 
have had a larger number of refugees and freedmen to provide 
for, but in proportion to the number I have no doubt that the 
expense is less now than it was before the establishment of the 
bureau." 

" The query again presents itself," said the President, " whether 
the system proposed by the bill will not, when put into complete 
operation, practically transfer the entire care, support, and control 
of four million emancipated slaves to agents, overseers, or task- 
masters, who, appointed at AYashington, are to be located iii every 
county and parish throughout the United States containing freed- 
men and refugees." 

" I scarcely know how to reply to that most extravagant state- 
ment," said Mr. Trumbull. " I have already shown that it would 
be a great abuse of the power conferred by this bill to station an 
agent in every county. I have already stated that but a small 
proportion of the freedmen are aided by the Freedmen's Bureau. 
In this official document the President has sent to Congress the 
exaggerated statement that it is a question whether this bureau 
would not bring under its control the four million emancipated 
slaves. The census of 1860 shows that there never were four 
million slaves in all the United States, if you counted every man, 
woman, and child, and we know that the number has not in- 
creased during the war. But, sir, what will be thought when I 
show, as I shall directly show by official figures, that, so far from 
providing for four million emancipated slaves, the Freedmen's 
Bureau never yet provided for a hundred thousand, and, as re- 
stricted by the proviso to the third section of the present bill, it 
could never be extended, under it, to a larger number. Is it not 
most extraordinary that a bill should be returned with the veto 
from the President on the ground that it provides for four million 
people, when, restricted in its operations as it is, and having been 
in operation since INIarch last, it has never had under its control 
a hundred thousand ? I have here an official statement from the 
Freedmen's Bureau, which I beg leave to read in this connection : 



182 THE THIBTY-JflJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

" 'The "Teatest number of persons to whom rations were issued, inchiding 
the Commissary Department, the bureau issues to persons without the army, 
is one hundred and forty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty.' 

" Who are they ? I said there were not a hundred thousand 
fi-eedmen provided for by the bureau. 

" ' Whites, 57,369 ; colored, 90,607 ; Indians, 133. The greatest number by 
the bureau was 49,932, in September. The total number for December was 
17,025.' 

" That sounds a little different from four millions. Seventeen 
thousand and twenty-five were all that were provided for by the 
Freedmen's Bureau in the month of December last, the number 
getting less and less every month. Why ? Because, by the kind 
and judicious management of that bureau, places of employment 
w^ere found for these refugees and freedmen. When the freedmeu 
were discharged from their masters' plantations they were assisted 
to find places of work elsewhere. 

" The President sa^'s," continued INIr. Trumbull, " that Congress 
never thought of making these provisions for the white people. 
Let us see what provisions have been made for the white people. 
Major-General Fisk, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for 
the State of Tennessee, in his testimony given before the Eecon- 
struction Committee, said : 

" 'During the last year, the rations issued to white people in Tennessee 
have been much in excess of those issued to freedmen. When I took charge 
of my district the Government was feeding twenty-five thousand people ; in 
round numbers, about seventeen thousand five hundred white persons and 
seven thousand blacks. The month preceding the establishment of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, for rations alone for that class of people the sum of 
$97,000 was paid. My first efibrts were to reduce the number of those 
beneficiaries of the Government, to withhold the rations, and make the 
people self-supporting as far as possible; and in the course of four months 
I reduced the monthly expenses from $97,000 to $5,000.' 

" In addition to the objections already stated," said the Presi- 
dent, "the fifth section of this bill proposes to take away land 
from its former owners, without any legal proceedings first had." 

"I regret," said Mr. Trumbull, "that a statement like that 
should inadvertently (for it must have been inadvertent) have 
found a place in this Veto Message. The fifth section of the bill 



THE FREEBMEK. 183 

docs not jii'oposc to take away lands from any body. I will read 
it, and wc shall see what it is : 

" ' That the occupauts of hiud under Major-Cenci'al Sherman's special field 
order, dated at Savannah, January 16, 1865, are hereby confirmed in their 
possession.' 

" Is not this a different thing from taking away land from any 
body ? Do you take a thing away from another jierson when you 
have it in your possession akeady ? This fifth section, so far from 
taking land from any body, provides sdmply for protecting the 
oceiqwnts of the land for three years from the 16th of January, 
1865, a little less than two years from this time. If the section 
docs any thing, it simply prevents the restoration of this property 
to its former owners within that period, except upon terms to be 
entered into, satisfactory to the commissioner, between the occupant 
and the former owner. This is all there is of it. It is a very 
different thing from taking away land from its former owners." 

"Undoubtedly," said the President, "the freedmen should be 
protected by the civil authorities, especially by the exercise of all 
the constitutional powers of the courts of the United States and 
of the States." 

" Let us see," replied Mr. Trumbull, " how they are protected 
by the civil authority." After having read from documents setting 
forth laws in reference to freedmen in force in Texas and ISIissis- 
sippi, INIr. Trumbull continued : " I have here a number of com- 
munications of a similar character, showing that, by the laws in 
some of the Southern States, a pass system still exists, and that 
the negro really has no protection afforded him either by the civil 
authorities or judicial tribunals of the State. I have letters show- 
ing the same thing in the State of Maryland, from persons whose 
character p vouched for as reliable. Under this state of things, 
the President tells us that the freedman should be protected ^ by 
the exercise of all the constitutional powers of the courts of the 
United States and of the States ! ' " 

" He also possesses," said the President, referring to the freed- 
man, " a perfect right to change his place of abode ; and if, there- 
fore, he does not find in one community or State a mode of life 
suited to his desires, or proper remuneration for his labor, he can 
move to another where that labor is more esteemed and better re- 
warded." 



184 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJVGEFSS. 

" Then, sir/' said Mr. Trumbull, " is there no necessity for some 
supervising care of these people ? Are they to be coldly told that 
they have a perfect right to change their place of abode, when, if 
they are caught in a strange neighborhood without a pass, they are 
liable to be whipped ? when combinations exist against them that 
they shall not be permitted to hire unless to their former master ? 
Are these people, knowing nothing of geography, knowing not 
where to go, having never in their lives been ten miles from the 
place where they were born, these old women and young children, 
these feeble persons who are turned oif because they can no longer 
work, to be told to go and seek employment elsewhere ? and is the 
Government of the United States, which has made them free, to 
stand by and do nothing to save and protect them ? Are they to 
be left to the mercy of such legislation as that of Mississippi, to 
such laws as exist in Texas, to such practices as are tolerated in 
Maryland and in Kentucky ? Sir, I think some protection is neces- 
sary for them, and that was the object of this bureau. It was not 
intended, and such is not its effect, to interfere with the ordinary 
administration of justice in any State, not even during the rebell- 
ion. The moment that any State does justice and abolishes all 
discrimination between whites and blacks in civil rights, the judi- 
cial functions of the Freedmen's Bureau cease. 

" But," continued Mr. Trumbull, " the President, most strangely 
of all, dwells upon the unconstitutionality of this act, without ever 
having alluded to that provision of the Constitution which its ad- 
vocates claim gives the authority to pass it. Is it not most extra- 
ordinary that the President of the United States returns a bill 
which has passed Congress, with his objections to it, alleging it 
to be unconstitutional, and makes no allusion whatever in his 
whole message to that provision of the Constitution which, in the 
opinion of its supporters, clearly gives the authority t© pass it? 
And what is that? The second clause of the constitutional 
amendment, which declares that Congress shall have authority 
by appropriate legislation to enforce the article which declares 
that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
throughout the United States. If legislation be necessary to 
protect the former slaves against State laws, which allow them to 
be whip[K'd if found away from home without a pass, has not 
Congress, under the second clause of the amendment, authority 
to provide it? AYhat kind of freedom is that which the Consti- 



THE FREED MEM. 185 

tution of the United States guarantees to a man that does not 
protect liim from the lash if he is caught away from home with- 
out a pass ? And how can we sit here and discharge the consti- 
tutional obligation that is upon us to pass the appropriate legis- 
lation to protect every man in the land in his freedom, when we 
know such laws are being passed in the South, if we do nothing 
to prevent their enforcement? Sir, so far from the bill being 
unconstitutional, I should feel that I had failed in my constitu- 
tional duty if I did not propose some measure that would protect 
these people in their freedom. And yet this clause of the Con- 
stitution seems to have escaped* entirely the observation of the 
President. 

" The President objects to this bill because it was passed in the 
absence of representation from the rebellious States. If that ob- 
jection be valid, all our legislation affecting those States is wrong, 
and has been wrong from the beginning. When the rebellion 
broke out, in the first year of the war, we passed a law for col- 
lecting a direct tax, and we assessed that tax upon all the rebell- 
ious States. According to the theory of the President, that was 
all wrong, because taxation and representation did not go together. 
Those States were not represented. Then, according to this ar- 
gument, (I will not read all of it,) we were bound to have re- 
ceived their Kepresentatives, or else not legislate for and tax them. 
He insists they were States in the Union all the time, and accord- 
ing to the Constitution, each State is entitled to at least one 
Representative. 

" If the argument that Congress can not legislate for States 
unrepresented is good now, it was good during the conflict of 
arms, for none of the States whose governments were usurped 
are yet relieved from military control. If we have no right to 
legislate for those States now, w-e had no right to impose the 
direct tax upon them. "We had no right to pass any of our 
laws that affected them. We had no right to raise an army to 
march into the rebellious States while they were not represented 
in the Congress of the United S*tes. We had no right to pass 
a law declaring these States in rebellion. Why? The rebels 
were not here to be represented in the American Senate. . We 
had no right to pass a law authorizing the President to issue a 
proclamation discontinuing all intercourse with the people of 
those rebellious States ; and why ? Because they were not repre- 



ISO THE iniETY-KmTR COM GUESS. 

sented here, '\^'e liud no right to blockade their coast. Why? 
They were not represented here. They are States, says the Presi- 
dent, and each State is entitled to two Senators, and to at least 
one llcprcscntative. Suppose the State of South Carolina had 
sent to Congress, during the war, a Representative ; had Congress 
nothing to do but to admit him, if found qualified ? Must he be 
received because he comes from a State, and a State can not go 
out of the Union ? Why, sir, is any thing more necessary than 
to state this proposition to show its absolute absurdity ? " 

The President said : " The President of the United States 
stands toward the country in a somewhat different attitude from 
that of any member of Congress. Each member of Congress is 
chosen from a single district or State ; the President is chosen by 
the people of all the States. As eleven States are not at this 
time represented in either branch of Congress, it would seem to 
be his duty, on all proper occasions, to present their just claims 
to Congress." 

"If it would not be disrespectful," said Mr. Trumbull, "I 
should like to inquire how many votes the President got in those 
eleven States. Sir, he is no more the representative of those 
eleven States than I am, except as he holds a higher position. 
I came here as a Eeprescntative chosen by the State of Illinois; 
but I came here to legislate, not simply for the State of Illinois, 
but for the United States of America, and for South Carolina as 
well as Illinois. I deny that we are simply the Representatives 
of the districts and States which send us here, or that we are 
governed by such narrow views that we can not legislate for the 
whole country ; and we are as much the Representatives, and, in 
this particular instance, receive as much of the support of those 
eleven States as did the President himself." 

Mr. Trumbull finally remarked : " The President believes this 
bill unconstitutional; I believe it constitutional. He believes 
that it will involve great expense ; I believe it will save expense. 
He believes that the freedmen will be protected without it; I 
believe he will be tyrannized f)ver, abused, and virtually reen- 
slaved, without some legislation by the nation for his protection. 
He believes it unwise ; I believe it to be politic." 

AVithout further debate, the vote Avas taken on the question, 
"Shall the bill i^ass, the objections of the President of the United 
States notwithstanding?" The Senators voted as follows: 



THE FREED MEK. 187 

Yeas — Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Chirk, Conness, Cragin, Cres- 
well, Fesscnden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Howard, IIowc, Kirk- 
wood, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, 
•Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Sumner, Trumbull, AVade, Williams, Wilson, 
and Yates— 30. 

Xays— Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Uen- 
dricks, Johnson, McDougall, Morgan, Ncsmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, 
Stewart, Stockton, Van Winkle, and Willey — 18. 

Absent — Messrs. Foot and Wright — 2. 

The President pro tempore then announced, " On thi.s question 
the yeas are thirty and the nays are eighteen. Two-thirds of 
the members present not having voted for the bill, it is not a 
law." 



ISS THE THIETY-jYI^'TH COjYGRESS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

the civil rights bill in the senate. 

Duty of Coxgress consequent upon the Abolition of Slavery — Civil 
Rights Bill introduced — ^Reference to Judiciary Committee — Before 
the Senate — Speech by Mr. Trumbull — Mr. Saulsbury — Mr. Van 
Winkle — Mr. Cowan — Mr. Howard — Mr. Johnson — Mr. Davis — Con- 
versations WITH Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Clark — Reply of Mr. John- 
son — Remarks by Mr. Morrill — Mr. Davis "wound up" — Mr. Guth- 
rie's Speech — Mr. Hendricks — Reply of Mr. Lane — Mr. Wilson — 
Mr. Trumbull's closing remarks — Yeas and Nays on the passage of 
the Bill. 

THE preceding Congress having proposed an amendment to 
the Constitution by which slavery should be abolished, and 
this amendment having been "ratified by three-fourths of 
the several States/' four millions of the inhabitants of the United 
States were transformed from slaves into freemen. To leave them 
with their shackles broken off, unprotected, in a new and unde- 
fined position, would have been a sin against them only surpassed 
in enormity by the original crime of their enslavement. 

As provided in the amendment itself, it devolved upon Con- 
gress "to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." The 
Thirty-ninth Congress assembled, realizing that it devolved upon 
them to define the extent of the rights, privileges, and duties 
of the freedmen. That body was not slow in meeting the full 
measure of its responsibility. 

Immediately on the reassembling of Congress after the holi- 
days, January 5, 1866, Mr. Trumbull, in pursuance of previous 
notice, introduced a bill "to protect all persons in the United 
States in their civil rights, and furnish the means of their vindi- 
cation." This bill, having been read twice, was referred to the 
Committee on the Judiciary. 



CIVIL EIGHTS HILL. ISO 

It Avas liighly appropriate tliat tins bill, involving the relations 
of millions of the inhabitants of the United States to the Govern- 
ment, should be referred to this able coniniittce, selected from 
among the men of most distinguished legal ability in the Senate. 
Its members were chosen in consideration of their high profes- 
sional ability, their long experience, and exalted standing as 
jurists. They are the legal advisers of the Senate, whose report 
upon constitutional questions is entitled to the highest consider- 
ation. 

To such a committee the Senate appropriately referred the Civil 
Rights Bill, and the nation could safely trust in their hands the 
great interests therein involved. 

Tlic bill declares that "there shall be no discrimination In civil 
rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Ter- 
ritory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of slavery ; but the inhabitants, of every race and color, 
without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involun- 
tary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the 
party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right 
to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evi- 
dence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and 
personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and 
proceedings for the security of person and property, and shall 
be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none 
other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the 
contrary notwithstanding. Any person who, under cover of any 
law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or 
cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory 
to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by the act, 
or to different punishment, pains, or penalties, on account of such 
person having at any time been held in a condition of slavery or 
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof 
the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his color 
or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, 
is to be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, to 
be punished by a fine not exceeding §1,000, or imprisonment not 
exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court." 

Other provisions of the bill relate to the courts which shall 
have jurisdiction of cases which arise under the act, and the means 
to be employed in its enforcement. 



190 THE THIETY-MIJ^TE CO JV GUESS. 

That no question might arise as to the constitutionality of the 
law, all the provisions which relate to the enforcement of the act 
were borrowed from the celebrated Fugitive Slave Law, enacted 
in 1850. It Avas a happy thought to comj)el the enemies of the 
negro themselves, as judges, to pronounce in favor of the consti- 
tutionality of this ordinance. It is an admirable illustration of 
the progress of the age, that the very instruments which were 
used a few years before to rivet tighter the chains of the slave, 
should be employed to break those very chains to fragments. It 
shall forever stand forth to the honor of American legislation that 
it attained to more than poetic justice in using the very means 
once employed to repress and crush the negro for his defense and 
elevation. 

Within less than a week after the reference of this bill to the 
Judiciary Committee, it was reported back, with no alteration 
save a few verbal amendments. On account of pressure of other 
business, it did not come up for formal consideration and discus- 
sion in the Senate until the 29th of January. On that day Mr. 
Trumbull, having called up the bill for the consideration of the 
Senate, said: 

" I regard the bill to which the attention of the Senate is now 
called, as the most important measure that has been under its 
consideration since the adoption of the constitutional amendment 
abolishing slavery. That amendment declared that all persons 
in the United States should be free. This measure is intended 
to give effect to that declaration, and secure to all persons within 
the United States practical freedom. There is very little impor- 
tance in the general declaration of abstract truths and principles 
unless they can be carried into effect, unless the persons who are 
to be affected by them have some means of availing themselves 
of their benefits. Of what avail was the immortal declaration 
' that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their 
Creator wuth certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of haj)piness,' and 'that to secure these 
rights governments are instituted among men,' to the millions 
of the African race in this country who were ground down and 
degraded, and subjected to a slavery more intolerable and cruel 
than the world ever before knew ? Of what avail was it to the 
citizen of Massachusetts, who, a few years ago, went to South 
Carolina to enforce a constitutional right in court, that the Con- 



CIVIL HI GETS BILL. 101 

stitutlon of the United States (leclarcd that the eitizens of each 
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of 
citizens in the several States? And of what avail will it now 
be that the Constitution of the United States has declared that 
slavery shall not exist, if in the late slaveholding States laws arc 
to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent 
of privileges Avhich are essential to freemen ? 

" It is the intention of this bill to secure those rights. The 
laws in the slaveholding States have made a distinction against 
persons of African descent on account of their color, whether free 
or slave. I have before me the statutes of Mississippi. They 
provide that if any colored person, any free negro or mulatto, 
shall come into that State for the purpose of residing there, he 
shall be sold into slavery for life. If any person of African 
descent residing in that State travels from one county to another 
without having a pass or a certificate of his freedom, he is liable 
to be committed to jail, and to be dealt with as a person who is 
in the State without authority. Other provisions of the statute 
prohibit any negro or mulatto from having fire-arms; and one 
provision of the statute declares that for ' exercising the functions 
of a minister of the Gospel, free negroes and mulattoes, on con- 
viction, may be punished by any number of lashes not exceeding 
thirty-nine, on the bare back, and shall pay the costs." Other 
provisions of the statute of Mississippi prohibit a free negro or 
mulatto from kee^iing a house of entertainment, and subject him 
to trial before two justices of the peace and five slaveholders for 
violating the provisions of this law. The statutes of South Caro- 
lina make it a highly penal offense for any person, white or 
colored, to teach slaves; and similar provisions are to be found 
running through all the statutes of the late slaveholding States. 

" AVhen the constitutional amendment was adopted and slavery 
abolished, all these statutes became null and void, because they 
were all passed in aid of slavery, for the purpose of maintaining 
and supporting it. Since the abolition of slavery, the Legis- 
latures which have assembled in the insurrectionary States have 
passed laws relating to the freedmen, and in nearly all the States 
they have discriminated against them. They deny them certain 
rights, subject them to severe penalties, and still impose upon 
them the very restrictions which were imposed upon them in con- 
sequence of the existence of slavery, and before it was abolished. 



192 THE THIRTY-KIKTR COMGBESS. 

The purpose of the bill under consideration is to destroy all 
these discriminations, and to carry into effect the constitutional 
amendment." 

After having stated somewhat at length the grounds upon 
which he placed this bill, Mr. Trumbull closed by saying: 
"Most of the provisions of this bill are copied from the late 
Fugitive Slave Act, adopted in 1850 for the purpose of returning 
fugitives from slavery into slavery again. The act that was 
passed at that time for the purpose of punishing persons who 
should aid negroes to escape to freedom is now to be applied by 
the provisions of this bill to the punishment of those who shall 
undertake to keep. them in slavery. Surely we have the author- 
ity to enact a law as efficient in the interests of freedom, now that 
freedom prevails throughout the country, as we had in the interest 
of slavery when it prevailed in a portion of the country." 

Mr. Saulsbury took an entirely different view of the subject 
under consideration : " I regard this bill," he said, " as one of the 
most dangerous that was ever introduced into the Senate of the 
United States, or to which the attention of the American people 
was ever invited. During the last four or five years, I have sat 
in this chamber and witnessed the introduction of bills into this 
body which I thought obnoxious to many very grave and serious 
constitutional objections ; but I have never, since I have been a 
membfer of the body, seen a bill so fraught wath danger, so full 
of mischief, as the bill now under consideration. 

" I shall not follow the honorable Senator into a consideration 
of the manner in which slaves were treated in the Southern States, 
nor the privileges that have been denied to them by the laws of the 
States. I think the time for shedding tears over the poor slave has 
well nigh passed in this country. The tears which the honest white 
people of this country have been made to shed from the oppres- 
sive acts of this Government, in its various departments, during 
the last four years, call more loudly for my sympathies than those 
tears which have been shedding and dropping and dropping for 
the last twenty years in reference to the poor, oppressed slave — 
dropping from the eyes of strong-minded women and weak- 
minded men, until, becoming a mighty flood, they have swept 
away, in their resistless force, every trace of constitutional liberty 
in this country. 

" I Suppose it is a foregone conclusion that this measure, as 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 103 

one of a scries of measures, is to be passed through tliis Congress 
regardless of all consequences. But the day that the President 
of the United States places his approval and signature to that 
Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and to this bill, he will have signed 
two acts more dangerous to the liberty of his countrymen, more 
disastrous to the citizens of this country, than all the acts which 
have been passed from the foundation of the Government to the 
present hour; and if wc on this side of the chamber manifest 
anxiety and interest in reference to these bills, and the questions 
involved in them, it is because, having known this population 
all our lives, knowing them in one hour of our infancy better 
than you gentlemen have known them all your lives, we feel 
compelled, by a sense of duty, earnestly and importunately, it 
may be, to appeal to the' judgment of the American Senate, and 
to reach, if possible, the judgment of the great mass of the 
American people, and invoke their attention to the awful conse- 
quences involved in measures of this character. Sir^ stop, stop ! 
the mangled, bleeding body of the Constitution of your country 
lies in your path ; you are treading upon its bleeding body Avhen 
you pass these laws." 

After having argued at considerable length that this bill would 
be a most «nconstitutional interference on the part of the Federal 
Government w^ith "the powers of the States under the Federal 
Constitution," the Senator from Delaware thus concluded : ' 

"Sir, from early boyhood I was taught to love and revere the 
Federal Union and those who made it. In early childhood I 
read the Avords of the Father of his country, in which he ex- 
horted the people to cling to the union of these States as the 
palladium of liberty, and my young heart bounded with joy in 
reading the burning words of lofty patriotism. I was taught in 
infancy to admire, as far as the infant mind could admire, our 
free system of government, Federal and State ; and I heard the 
old men say that the wit of man never devised a better or more 
lovely system of government. When I arrived at that age when 
I could study and reflect for myself, the teachings of childhood 
were approved by the judgment of the man. 

"I have seen how under this Union we had become great in 
the eyes of all nations; and I see now, notwithstanding the hor- 
rible afflictions of war, if we can have wisdom in council and 
sincere purpose to subserve the good of the whole people of the 
13 



194 THE THIRTY-jYIjYTH CONGRESS. 

United States, though much that was dear to us has been blasted 
as by the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction 
that wasteth at noonday, how we might, in the providence of 
God, resume our former position among the nations of the earth, 
and command the respect of the whole civilized world. But, sir, 
to-day, in viewing and in considering this bill, the thought has 
occurred to me, how happy were the founders of our Federal sys- 
tem of government, that they had been taken from the council 
chambers of this nation and from among their fellow-men before 
bills of this character were seriously presented for legislative con- 
sideration. Happily for them, they sleep their last sleep, and — 

" ' How sleep the brave who sink to rest, 
By all their country's wishes- blest! 
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
Returns to deck their hallowed mold. 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 

"'By fairy hands their knell is rung; 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung; 
There Honor comes, a pilgrim' gray. 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay; 
And Freedom shall henceforth repair * 

And dwell a weeping hermit there.' " ^ 

On the following day, ^Mr. Van Winkle, of West Virginia, 
addressed the Senate on the merits of the bill. He thought that 
the objects sought could only be attained through an amendment 
to the Constitution. He moreover said : 

" We hear a great deal about the sentence from the Declaration 
of Independence, that ' all men are created equal.' I am willing 
to admit tlmt all men are created equal; but how are they equal? 
Can a citizen of France, for instance, by going into England, be 
entitled to all the rights of a citizen of that country, or by com- 
ing into this country acquire all the rights of an American, unless 
he is naturalized ? Can a citizen of our country, by going into 
any other, become entitled to the rights of a citizen there? If 
not, it may be said that they are not equal. I believe that the 
division of men into separate communities, and their living in so- 
ciety and association with their fellows, as they do, are both divine 
institutions, and that, consequently, the authors of the Declara- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL, 195 

tion of Independence could liavc meant nothing more than that 
the rights ot" citizens of any community arc equal to the rights 
of all other citizens of that community. Whenever all commu- 
nities are conducted in accordance with these principles, these very 
conditions of their prosperous existence, then all mankind will 
be equal, each enjoying his equality in his own community, and 
not till then. Therefore, I assert that there is no right that can 
be exercised by any community of society more perfect than that 
of excluding from citizenship or membership those who are ob- 
jectionable. If a little society is formed for a benevolent, literary, 
or any other purpose, the members immediately exercise, and 
claim the right to exercise, that right ; they determine who shall 
come into their community. We have the right to determine 
U'ho shall be members of our community ; and much as has been 
said here about what God has done, and about our obligations 
to the Almighty in reference to this matter, I do not see where 
it comes in that we are bound to receive into our community 
those whose minglings with us might be detrimental to our in- 
terests. I do not believe that a superior race is bound to receive 
among it those of an inferior race, if the mingling of them can 
only tend to the detriment of the mass. I do not mean strict 
miscegenation, but I mean the mingling of two races in society, 
associating from time to time with each other." 

Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, spoke against the bill. He 
said: "The identical question came up in my State — the ques- 
tion whether the negro was a citizen, and whether he possessed 
political power in that State— and it was there decided that he 
was not one of the original corporators, that he was not one of 
the freemen who originally possessed political power, and that 
they had never, by any enactment or by any act of theirs, ad- 
mitted him into a participation of that power, except so far as 
to tax him for the sujDport of Government. And, IVIr. President, 
I think it a most important question, and particularly a most 
important question for the Pacific coast, and those States which 
lie upon it, as to whether this door shall now be thrown open to 
the Asiatic population. If it be, there is an end to republican 
government there, because it is very well ascertained that those 
people have no appreciation of that form of government ; it seems 
to be obnoxious to their very nature; they seem to be incapable 
either of understanding it or of carrying it out; and I can not 



196 THE THIBTT-^'LYTE CO.YGRESS. 

consent to say that California, or Oregon, or Colorado, or Ne- 
vada, or any of those States, shall be given over to an irruption 
of Chinese. I, for my part, protest against it. 

"There is a great deal more in this bill that is exceedingly 
objectionable. It is the first time, I think, in the history of civ- 
ilized legislation, that a judicial officer has been held up and sub- 
jected to a criminal punishment for that which may have been 
a conscientious discharge of his duty. It is, I say, the first case 
that I know of, in the legislation of modern and civilized nations, 
where a bill of indictment is to take the place of a writ of error, 
and where a mistake is to be tortured into a crime. 

" I may state that I have another obj«ction to this bill at the 
present time ; and that is, that the people of several States in the 
Union are not represented here, and yet this law is mainly to ope- 
rate upon those people. I think it would be at least decent, respect- 
ful, if we desire to maintain and support this Government on the 
broad foundation upon which it was laid — namely, the consent of 
the governed — that we should wait, at any rate, until the people 
upon whom it is to operate have a voice in these halls." 

Mr. Cowan then proceeded in a somewhat "devious course," 
as it was characterized by another Senator, to make remarks 
upon the subject of reconstruction. Many questions and remarks 
M'cre interposed by other Senators, giving the discussion an ex- 
ceedingly colloquial style. 

At length, Mr. Howard, of Michigan, having obtained the 
floor, spoke in favor of the bill. He said: "If I understand 
correctly the interpretation given by several Senators to the con- 
stitutional amendment abolishing slavery, it is this : that the sole 
effect of it is to cut and sever the mere legal ligament by which 
the person and the service of the slave was attached to his master, 
and that beyond this particular office the amendment does not go; 
that it can have no effi^ct whatever upon the condition of the eman- 
cipated black in any other respect. In other words, they hold that 
it relieves him from his so-called legal obligation to render his 
personal service to his master without compensation, and there 
leaves him, totally, irretrievably, and without any power on the 
part of Congress to look after his well-being from the moment of 
this mockery of emancipation. Sir, such was not the intention of 
the friends of this amendment at the time of its initiation here, 
and at the time of its adoption ; and I undertake to say that it is 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 107 

not the construction wlilcli is given to it by the bar througliout 
the country, and much less by the liberty-loving people. 

" But let us look more closely at this narrow construction. 
Where does it leave us? We are told that the amendment 
simply relieves the slave from the obligation to render service to 
his master. What is a slave in contemplation of American law, 
in contemplation of the laws of all the slave States? We know 
full well ; the history of two hundred years teaches us that he 
had no rights, nor nothing which he could call his own. He 
had not the right to become a husband, or a father in the eye of 
the law ; he had no child ; he was not at liberty to indulge the 
natural affections of the human heart for children, for wife, or 
even for friend. He owned no property, because the law pro- 
hibited him. He could not take real or personal estate either by 
sale, by grant, or by descent or inheritance. He did not OAvn the 
bread he earned and ate. He stood upon the face of the earth 
completely isolated from the society in which he happened to be. 
He was nothing but a chattel, subject to the will of his owner, 
and unprotected in his rights by the law of the State where he 
happened to live. His rights, did I say? No, sir, I use inap- 
propriate language. He had no rights; he v/as an animal; he 
was property, a chattel. The Almighty, according to the ideas 
of the times, had made him to be property, a chattel, and not a 
man. 

" Now, sir, it is not denied that this relation of servitude be- 
tween the former negro slave and his master was actually severed 
by this amendment. But the absux'd construction now forced upon 
it leaves him without family, without property, without the im- 
plements of husbandry, and even without the right to acquire or 
use any instrumentalities of carrying on the industry of which 
he may be capable ; it leaves him without friend or support, and 
even without the clothes to cover his nakedness. He is a waif 
upon the current of time ; he has nothing that belongs to him on 
the face of the earth, except solely his naked person. And here, 
in this State, we are called upon to abandon the poor creature 
whom we have emancipated. AVe are coolly told that he has no 
right beyond this, and we are told that under this amendment the 
power of the State within whose limits he happens to be is not 
at all restrained in respect to him, and that the State, through its 
Legislature, may at any time declare him to be a vagrant, and 



198 THE TEIRTY-JflJS^TH COJ^GBESS. 

as such commit him to jail, or assign him to uncompensated 
service." 

Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, made a speech, in which he ex- 
pressed himself as in favor of conferring citizenship upon the 
negro, and yet unable to vote for this bill from the opinion he 
entertained on " the question of power." He referred to the 
Dred Scott and other decisions, and showed their bearing upon 
the legislation now proposed. He said : " I have been exceed- 
ingly anxious individually that there should be some definition 
Avhich will rid this class of our people from that objection. If 
the Supreme Court decision is a binding one, and will be followed 
in the future, this Jaw Avhich we are now about to pass will be 
held, of course, to be of no avail, as far as it professes to define 
what citizenship is, because it gives the rights of citizenship to all 
persons without distinction of color, and, of course, embraces Af- 
ricans or descendants of Africans." 

He referred to a j)recedent when Congress had conferred the 
rights of citizenship : " The citizens of Texas, who, of course, 
were aliens, it has never been doubted became citizens of the 
United States by the annexation of Texas; and that was not 
done by treaty, it was done by legislation. If the power was in 
Congress by legislation to make citizens of all the inhabitants of 
the State of Texas, why is it not in the power of Congress to 
make citizens by legislation of all who are inhabitants of the 
United States, and who are not citizens ? That is what this bill 
does, or what it proposes to do. There are wdthin the United 
States millions of people who are not citizens, according to the 
view of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ought they to 
be citizens? I think they ought. I think it is an anomaly that 
says there shall not be the rights of citizenship to any of the in- 
habitants of any State of the United States. 

" While they were slaves, it was a very different question ; but 
now, when slavery is terminated, and by terminating it you have 
got rid of the only obstacle in the way of citizenship, two questions 
arise : First, whether that fact itself does not make them citizens ? 
Before they were not citizens, because of slavery, and only because 
of slavery. Slavery abolished, why are they not just as much cit- 
izens as they would have been if slavery had never existed ? My 
opinion is that they become citizens, and I hold that opinion so 
strongly that I should consider it unnecessary to legislate on the 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 190 

subject' at all, as far as that class is concerned, but for the ruling 
of the Supreme Court to which I have adverted." 

]\Ir. Davis, of Kentucky, spoke against the propriety and con- 
stitutionality of making all negroes citizens of the United States. 
He said : " There never was a colony before the Declaration of 
Independence, and there never was a State after the Declaration 
of Independence, up to the time of the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, so far as I have been able to learn by the slight historical 
examination which I have given to the subject, that ever made or 
attempted to make any other person than a 'person who belonged 
to one of the nationalities of Europe a citizen. I invoke the chair- 
man of the committee to give me an instance, to point to any his- 
tory or any memento, where a negro, although that negro was born 
in America, was ever made a citizen of either of the States of the 
United States before the adoption of this Constitution. The whole 
material out of which citizens w'cre made previous to the adoption 
of the present Constitution was from the European nationalities, 
from the Caucasian race, if I may use the term. I deny that a 
single citizen was .ever made by one of the States out of the negro 
race. I deny that a single citizen \vas ever made by one of the 
States out of the Mongolian race. I controvert that a single cit- 
zen was ever made by one of the States out of the Chinese race, 
out of the Hindoos, or out of any other race of people but the 
Caucasian race of Europe. 

" I come, then, to this position : that whenever the States, after 
the Declaration of Independence and before the present Constitu- 
tion was adopted, legislated in relation to citizenship, or acted in 
their governments in relation to citizenship, the subject of that 
legislation or that action was the Caucasian race of Europe ; that 
none of the inferior races of any kind were intended to be embraced 
or were embraced by this work of Government in manufacturing 
citizens." 

Mr. Trumbull inquired, "Will the Senator from Kentucky 
allow me to ask him if he means to assert that negroes were not 
citizens of any of these colonies before the adoption of the Con- 
stitution ? " 

" I say they were not," said ]\Ir. Davis. 

" Does the Senator wish any authority to show that they were?" 
asked Mr. Trumbull. 

"When I get through," said Mr. Davis, "you can answer me." 



200 THE TniRTY-KIKTR COJ^GRESS. 

Mr. Trumbull replied : " I understood the Senator to clialleno-e 
me to produce any proof on that point, and I thought he would 
like to have it in his speech. I can assert to him that by a solemn 
decision of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, they were citi- 
zens before the adoption of the Constitution." 

" If the honorable Senator will allow me/' said Mr. Davis, " I 
M'ill get along with my remarks." 

"I think you will get along better," replied Mr. Trumbull, 
" by not. being exposed in your statements." 

" The honorable Senator is full of conceit, but I have seen less 
conceit with a great deal more brains," said Mr. Davis, who then 
proceeded " to throw up " what he termed " the main buttress for 
the defense of the positions" that he took. 

" My main position," said he, " is, that no native-born person 
of the United States, of any race or color, can be admitted a 
citizen of the United States by Congress under the power 
conferred in relation to naturalization by the Constitution upon 
Congress." 

After reading some authorities, the Senator proceeded to say : 
" A grave hallucination in this day is to claim all power ; and a 
minor error is that every thing which passion, or interest, or party 
power, or any selfish claims may represent to the judgment or 
imagination of gentlemen who belong to strong parties, to be 
necessary or useful for the good and the domination of such par- 
ties, is seized upon in defiance of a fair construction of language, 
in outrage of the plain meaning of the Constitution. That is not 
the rule by which our Constitution is to be interpreted. It is not 
the rule by which it is to be administered. On the contrary, if 
the able, honorable, and clear-headed Senator from Illinois would 
do himself and his country the justice to place himself in the 
position of the framers of the Constitution ; if he would look all 
around on the circumstances and connections of that day, on the 
purposes of those men not only in relation to forming a more 
perfect Union, but also in relation to securing the blessings of life, 
liberty, and property to themselves and their posterity forever ; 
if the honorable Senator would construe the Constitution accor- 
ding to the light, the sacred and briglit light which such sur- 
rounding circumstances would throw upon his intellect, it seems 
to me that he would at once abandon this abominable bill, and 
would also usk to withdraw its twin sister from the other House 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 201 

that both might be smothered here together upon the iiUar of the 
Constitution and of patriotism." 

At the close of Mr. Davis' speech, nuich debate and conversa- 
tion ensued among various Senators u})on a proposed amendment 
by INIr. Lane, of Kansas, by which Indians " under tribal author- 
ity " should be excluded from the benefits conferred by this bill. 
After this question was disposed of, Mr. Davis was drawn out in 
another speech by what seemed to him to be the necessity of de- 
fending some positions which he had assumed. He said : 

" I still reiterate the position that the negro is not a citizen here 
according to the essential fundamental principles of our system; 
but whether he be a citizen or not, he is not a foreigner, and no 
man, white or black, or red or mixed, can be made a citizen by 
naturalization unless he is a foreigner." 

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, interposed : " I wish the Sen- 
ator from Kentucky would tell us what constitutes a citizen under 
the Constitution." 

"A foreigner is not a citizen in the fullest sense of the word at 
all," said Mr. Davis. 

" The Senator is now telling us," said Mr. Clark, " who is not 
a citizen, but my question is, What constitutes a citizen ? " 

"I leave that to the exercise of your own ingenuity," replied 
Mr. Davis. 

"That is it," said Mr. Clark. "Washington is dead; Marshall 
is dead; Story is dead; I hoped the Senator from Kentucky 
would have enlightened us. He says a negro is not a citizen, and 
a negro is not a foreigner and can not be made a citizen. He 
says that a person wdio might be and was a citizen before the 
Constitution, is not a citizen since the Constitution was adopted. 
What right was taken away from him by the Constitution that 
disqualifies him from being a citizen? The free negroes in my 
State, before the Constitution was adopted, were citizens." 

Mr. Davis, having admitted that free negroes were citizens be- 
fore the Constitution in New Hampshire, Mr. Clark said : 

" I desired that the Senator should tell me what, in his opinion, 
constituted a citizen under the Constitution." 

Mr. Davis replied : " I will answer the honorable Senator. We 
sometimes answer a positive question by declaring what a thing is 
not. Now, the honorable Senator asks me what a citizen is. It 



20^ TEE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COMGRESS. 

is easier to answer what it is not than what it is, and I say that 
a negro is not a citizen." 

"AVell, that is a lucid definition," said ISIr. Clark. 

''Sufficient for the subject," said Mr. Davis. 

" That is begging the question," Mr. Clark replied. " I wanted 
to find why a negro was not a citizen, if the gentleman would tell 
me. If he would lay down his definition, I wanted to see whether 
the negro did not comply with it and conform to it, so as to be a 
citizen ; but he insists that he is not a citizen." 

" I will answer that question, if the honorable Senator will per- 
mit me," said Mr. Davis. " Government is a political partner- 
ship. No persons but the partners who formed the partnership 
are parties to the government. Here is a government formed 
by the Avhite man alone. The negro was excluded from the 
formation of our political partnership ; he had nothing to do with 
it; he had nothing to do in its formation." 

"Is it a close corporation, so that new partners can not be 
added?" asked Mr. Stewart, of Nevada. 

" Yes, sir," said Mr. Davis ; " it is a close white corporation. 
You may bring all of Europe, but none of Asia and none of 
Africa into our partnership." 

"Let us see," said Mr. Clark, "how that may be. Take the 
gentleman's own ground that government is a partnership, and 
those who did not enter into it and take an active part in it can 
not be citizens. Is a woman a citizen under our Constitution ?" 

" Not to vote," said Mr. Davis. 

" I did not ask about voting," said Mr. Clark. " The gentle- 
man said awhile ago that voting did not constitute citizenship. 
I want to know if she is a citizen. Can she not sue and be sued, 
contract, and exercise the rights of a citizen ? " 

" So can a free negro," said Mr. Davis. 

" Then, if a free negro can do all that," said Mr. Clark ; " why 
is he not a citizen ?" 

" Because he is no part of the governing power ; that is the 
reason," Mr. Davis replied. 

" I deny that," said Mr. Clark, " because in some of the States 
he is a part of the governing power. The Senator only begs the 
question; it only comes back to this, that a nigger is a nigger." 
[Laughter.] 

" That is the whole of it," said Mr. Davis. 



■Xl, 




■^'^S'¥GE.Periiie?.C«f5*^^ 





JOHNSON, 
MA'KYLANP 



n. 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 203 

" That is tlic whole of the gentlcoian's logic," said Mr. Clark. 

In answer to the statement insisted on by Mr. Davis, "You 
can not make a citizen of any body that is not a foreigner," Mr. 
Johnson said : 

" That would be an extraordinary condition for the country to 
be in. Here are four million negroes. They are not foreigners, 
because they were born in the United States. They have no 
foreign allegiance to renounce, because they owed no foreign alle- 
giance. Their allegiance, whatever it was, was an allegiance to 
the Government of the United States alone. They can not come, 
therefore, under the naturalizing clause; they can not come, of 
course, under the statutes passed in pursuance of the power con- 
ferred upon Congress by that clause ; but does it follow from that 
that you can not make them citizens; that the Congress of the 
United States, vested with the whole legislative power belonging 
to the Government, having within the limits of the United States 
four million people anxious to become citizens, and when you are 
anxious to make them citizens, have no power to make them citi- 
zens? It seems to me that to state the question is to answer it. 

"The honorable member reads the Constitution as if it said 
that none but white men should become citizens of the United 
States; but it says no such thing, and never intended, in my 
judgment, to say any such thing. If it had designed to exclude 
from all participation in the rights of citizenship certain men on 
account of color, and to have confined, at all times thereafter, 
citizenship to the white race, it is but fair to presume, looking 
to the character of the men who framed the Constitution, that 
they would have put that object beyond all possible doubt; they 
would have said that no man should be a citizen of the United 
States except a white man, or rather w^ould have negatived the 
right of the negro to become a citizen by saying that Congress 
might pass uniform rules upon the subject of the naturalization 
of white immigrants and nobody else ; but that they did not do. 
They left it to Congress. Congress, in the exercise of their dis- 
cretion, have thought proper to insert the term ^ white' in the 
naturalization act; but they may strike it out, and if it should 
be stricken out, I do not think any lawyer, except my friend 
from Kentucky, would deny that a black man could be natural- 
ized, and by naturalization become a citizen of the United States. 

" But to go back to the point from which the questions of my 



WJi. THE THIRTY- J^IMTH CONGRESS. 

honorable friend from Kentucky caused me to digress, we have 
now within the United States four million colored people, the 
descendants of Africans, whose ancestors were brought into the 
United States as chattels. It was because of that condition that 
they Avere considered as not entitled to the rights of citizenship. 
We have put an end to that condition. We have said that at all 
times hereafter men of any color that nature may think proper to 
impress upon the human frame, shall, if within the United States, 
be free, and not property. Then, we have four million colored 
people M'ho are now as free as we are; and the only question is, 
whether, being free, they can not be clothed with the rights of 
citizenship. The honorable member from Kentucky says no, be- 
cause the naturalization clause does not include them. I have 
attempted to answer that. He says no, because the act passed in 
pursuance of that clause does not include them. I have answered 
that by saying that that act in that particular may be changed." 
On the following day, February 1st, the discussion of the bill 
was resumed by Mr. Morrill, of Maine. He said of the bill : 
" It marks an epoch in the history of this country, and from this 
time forward the legislation takes a fresh and a new departure. 
Sir, to-day is the only hour since this Government began when it 
was possible to have enacted it. Such has been the situation of 
politics in this country, nay, sir, such have been the provisions 
of the fundamental law of this country, that such legislation 
hitherto has never been possible. There has been no time since 
the foundation of the Government when an American Congress 
could by possibility have enacted such a law, or with propriety 
have made such a declaration. What is this declaration? All 
persons born in this country are citizens. That never was so be- 
fore. Although I have said that by the fundamental principles 
of American law all persons were entitled to be citizens by birth, 
w^e all know that there was an exceptional condition in the Gov- 
ernment of the country which j^rovided for an exception to this 
general rule. Here w^ere four million slaves in this country that 
were not citizens, not citizens by the general policy of the coun- 
try, not citizens on account of their condition of servitude ; up to 
this hour they could not have been treated by us as citizens; so 
long as that provision in the Constitution which recognized this 
exceptional condition remained the fundamental law of the coun- 
try, sucli a declaration as this would not have been legal, cowld 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 205 

not have been enacted by Congress. I hail it, therefore, as a 
declaration which typilics a grand fundamental change in the 
politics of the country, and which change justifies the declaration 
now. 

" The honorable Senator from Kentucky has vexed himself 
somewhat, I think, with the problem of the naturalization of 
American citizens! As he reads it, only foreigners can be natu- 
ralized, or, in other words, can become citizens; and upon his 
assumption, four million men and women in this country are out- 
side not only of naturalization, not only of citizenship, but outside 
of the possibility of citizenship. Sir, he has forgotten the grand 
principle both of nature and nations, both of law and politics, 
that birth gives citizenship of itself. This is the fundamental 
principle running through all modern politics both in this coun- 
try and in Europe. Every-where, where the principles of law 
have been recognized at all, birth by its inherent energy and 
force gives citizenship. Therefore the founders of this Govern- 
ment made no provision — of course they made none — for the 
naturalization of natural-born citizens. The Constitution speaks 
of ' natnral-born,' and speaks of them as citizens in contradisthic- 
tion from those who are alien to us. Therefore, sir, this amend- 
ment, although it is a grand enunciation, although it is a lofty 
and sublime declaration, has no force or efficiency as an enact- 
ment. I hail it and accept it simply as a declaration. 

" The honorable Senator from Kentucky, when he criticises the 
methods of naturalization, and rules out, for want of power, four 
million people, forgets this general process of nations and of 
nature by which every man, by his birth, is entitled to citizen- 
ship, and that upon the general principle that he owes allegiance 
to the country of his birth, and that country owes him protec- 
tion. That is the foundation, as I understand it, of all citizen- 
ship, and these are the essential elements of citizenship : allegiance 
on the one side, and protection on the other." 

In reply to statements made by Mr. Davis, Mr. Morrill re- 
marked : " The Senator from Kentucky denounces as a usurpation 
this measure, and particularly this amendment, this declaration. 
He says it is not within the principles of the Constitution. That 
it is extraordinary I admit. That the measure is not ordinary 
is most clear. There is no parallel, I have already said, for it 
in the history of this country; there is no parallel for it in the 



206 THE THIBTY-jYIJ^TE COMGRESS. 

history of any country. No nation, from the foundation of gov- 
ernment has ever undertaken to make a legislative declaration 
so broad. Why ? Because no nation hitherto has ever cherished 
a liberty so universal. The ancient republics were all exceptional 
in their liberty; they all had excepted classes, subjected classes, 
which were not the .subject of government, and, therefore, they 
could not so legislate. That it is extraordinary and without a 
parallel in the history of this Government, or of any other, does 
not affect the character of the declaration itself. 

"The Senator from Kentucky tells us that the proposition is 
revolutionary, and he thinks that is an objection. I freely con- 
cede that it is revolutionary. I admit that this species of legis- 
lation is absolutely revolutionary. But are we not in the midst 
of revolution ? Is the Senator from Kentucky utterly oblivious 
to the grand results of four years of war ? Are we not in the 
midst of a civil and political revolution which has changed the 
fundamental principles of our Government in some respects? 
Sir, is it no revolution that you have changed the entire system 
of servitude in this country ? Is it no revolution that now you 
can no longer talk of two systems of civilization in this country ? 
Four short years back, I remember to have listened to eloquent 
speeches in this chamber, in which we were told that there was 
a grand antagonism in our institutions ; that there were two civ- 
ilizations ; that there was a civilization based on servitude, and 
that it was antagonistic to the free institutions of the country. 
Where is that? Gone forever. That result is a revolution 
grander and sublimer in its consequences than the world has 
witnessed hitherto. 

"I accept, then, what the Senator from Kentucky thinks so 
obnoxious. We are in the midst of revolution. We have revo- 
lutionized this Constitution of ours to that extent; and every 
substantial change in the fundamental constitution of a country 
is a revolution. AVhy, sir, the Constitution even provides for 
revolutionizing itself. Nay, more, it contemplates it; contem- 
plates that in the changing phases of life, civil and political, 
changes in the fundamental law will become necessary ; and is it 
needful for me to advert to the facts and events of the last four 
or five years to justify the declaration that revolution here is not 
only radical and thorough, but the result of the events of the last 
four years ? Of course, I mean to contend in all I say that the 



CIVIL EIGHTS BILL. W7 

revolution of which I speak should be peaceful, as on the part 
of the Government here it has been peaceful. It grows out, to ^ 
be sure, of an assault upon our institutions by those whose pur- 
pose it was to overthrow the Government; but, on the part of the 
Government, it has been peaceful, it has been within the forms 
of the Constitution ; but it is a revolution nevertheless. 

" But the honorable Senator from Kentucky insists that it is a 
"usurpation. Not so, sir. Although it is a revolution radical, as 
I contend, it was not a usurpation. It was not a usurpation, 
because it took place within the provisions contemplated in the 
Constitution. More than that, it was a change precisely in har- 
mony with the general principles of the Government. This great 
chanii-e which has been wrought in our institutions was in har- 
mony with the fundamental principles of the Government. The 
change which has been made has destroyed that which was ex- 
ceptional in our institutions ; and the action of the Government 
in regard to it was provoked by the enemies of the Government. 
The opportunity was afforded, and the change which has been 
wrought was ingiiarmony with the fundamental principles of the 
Government." 

The Senator from Maine opposed the theory that this is a 
Government exclusively for white men. He remarked : " It is 
said that this amendment raises the general question of the an- 
tagonism* of the races, which, we are told, is a w^ell-established 
fact. It is said that no rational man, no intelligent legislator or 
statesman, should ever act without reference to that grand his- 
torical fact ; and the Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Cowan,] 
on a former occasion, asserted that this Government, that Amer- 
ican society, had been established here upon the principle of the 
exclusion, as he termed it, of the inferior and the barbarian races. 
Mr. President, I deny that proposition as a historical fact. There 
is nothing more inaccurate. No proposition could possibly be 
made here or anywhere else more inaccurate than to say that 
American society, either civil or political, was formed in the in- 
terest of any race or class. Sir, the history of the country does 
not bear out the statement of the honorable Senator from Penn- 
sylvania. Was not America said to be the land of refuge ? Ha^ 
it not been, since the earliest period, held up as an asylum for 
the oppressed of all nations ? Hither, allow me to ask, have not 
all the peoples of the nations of the earth come for an asylum 



208 THE TEIRTY-KIKTH COJ^GRESS. 

and for refuge? All the nations of the earth, and all the varie- 
ties of the races of the nations of the earth, have gathered here. 
In the early settlements of the country, the Irish, the French, 
the Swede, the Turk, the Italian, the Moor, and so I might 
enumerate all the races, and all the variety of races, came here ; 
and it is a fundamental mistake to suppose that settlement was 
begun here in the interests of any class, or condition, or race, 
or interest. This AVestern Continent was looked to as an asylum" 
for the oppressed of all nations and of all races. Hither all 
nations and all races have come. Here, sir, upon the grand 
plane of republican democratic liberty, they have undertaken to 
work out the great problem of man's capacity for self-government 
without stint or limit." 

Mr. Davis then made another speech in opposition to the bill. 
When the hour for adjournment had arrived, and Mr. Johnson 
interrupted him with a proposition that " the bill be passed over • 
for to-day," Mr. Davis said, " I am wound up, and am obliged 
to run down." The Senate, however, adjourned at a late hour, 
and resumed the hearing of Mr. Davis on the Allowing day. 

In alluding to Mr. Johnson's strictures on his assertion that 
Congress had no power to confer the right of citizenship on " the 
native born negro," Mr. Davis said : " The honorable Senator, 
[INIr. Johnson,] as I said the other day, is one of the ablest law- 
yers, and, I believe, the ablest living lawyer in the land. I have 
seen gentlemen sometimes so much the lawyer that they had to 
abate some of the statesman [laughter] ; and I am not certain, I 
would not say it was so — I w'ill not arrogate to myself to say 
so — but sometimes a suspicion flashes across my mind that that 
is precisely the predicament of my honorable friend. 

" I maintain that a negro can not be made a citizen by Con- 
gress ; he can not be made a citizen by any naturalization laws, 
because the naturalization laws apply to foreigners alone. No 
man can shake the legal truth of that position. They apply to 
foreigners alone; and a negro, an Indian, or any other person 
born within the United States, not being a foreigner, can not be 
naturalized; therefore they can not be made citizens by the uni- 
'form rule established by Congress under the Constitution, and 
there is no other rule. Congress has no power, as I said before, 
to naturalize a citizen. They could not be made citizens by 
treaty. If they are made so at all, it is by their birth, and the 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 209 

locality of their birth, and the general operation and effect of our 
Constitution. If they are so made "citizens, that question is a ju- 
dicial question, not a legislative question. Congress has no power 
to enlarge or extend any of the provisions of the Constitution 
which bear upon the birth or citizenship of negroes or Indians 
born in the United States. 

"If there ^yas any despot in Europe or in the world that 
wanted a master architect in framing and putting together a 
despotic and oppressive law, I would, if my slight voice could 
reach him, by all means say to him. Seek the laboratory of the 
Senator from Illinois. If he has not j^roved himself an adept 
in this kind of legislation, unconstitutional, unjust, oppressive, 
iniquitous, unwise, impolitic, calculated to keep forever a sever- 
ance of the Union, to exclude from all their constitutional rights, 
privileges, and powers under the Government eleven States of 
the Union — if he has not devised such a measure as that, I have 
not reason enough to comprehend it. 

Mr. Davis closed his speech by saying: "Was it for these 
fruits and these laws that we went into this war? Was it for 
these fruits and these laws and these oppressions that two million 
and a quarter of men were ordered into the field ? Was it that 
the American people might enjoy these as the fruits of the tri- 
umphant close of this war, that hundreds of thousands of them 
have been mutilated on the battle-field and by the diseases of the 
camp, and that a debt of four or five thousand million dollars 
has been left upon the country? If these are to be the results 
of the war, better that not a single man had been marshaled in 
the field nor a single star worn by one of our officers. These 
military gentlemen think they have a right to command and 
control every-where. They do it. They think they have a 
right to do it here, and we are sheciD in the hands of our shear- 
ers. We are dumb." 

Mr. Trumbull said : " I will occupy a few moments of the at- 
tention of the Senate, after this long harangue of the Senator 
from Kentucky, which he closed by declaring that w^e are dumb 
in the presence of military power. If he has satisfied the Senate 
that he is dumb, I presume he has satisfied the Senate of all the 
other positions he has taken ; and the others are about as absurd 
as that declaration. He denounces this bill as ' outrageous,' ' most 
14 



210 TUB TIIIBTY-jYIjYTH COJfGRESS. 

monstrous/ 'abominable/ 'oppressive/ 'iniquitous/ 'unconstitu- 
tional/ 'void.' 

"Now, what is this bill that is obnoxious to such terrible epi- 
thets? It is a bill providing that all people shall have equal 
rights. Is not that abominable ? Is not that iniquitous ? Is not 
that monstrous ? Is not that terrible on white men ? [Laughter.] 
When was such legislation as this ever thought of for white men ? 

" Sir, this bill applies to white men as well as black men. It 
declares tliat all men in the United States shall be entitled to the 
same civil rights, the right to the fruit of their own labor, the 
right to make contracts, the right to buy and sell, and enjoy lib- 
erty and happiness; and that is abominable and iniquitous and 
unconstitutional ! Could any thing be more monstrous or more 
abominable than for a member of the Senate to rise in his place 
and denounce with such epithets as these a bill, the only object 
of which is to secure equal rights to all the citizens of the coun- 
try — a bill that protects a white man just" as much as a black 
man? "With what consistency and with what fice can a Senator 
in his place here say to the Senate and the country, that this is a 
bill for the benefit of the black men exclusively, when there is 
no such distinction in it, and when the very object of the bill is 
to break down all discrimination between black men and white 
men?" 

INIr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, said : " ISIy doctrine is that slavery 
exists no longer in this country; that it is impossible to exist in 
the face of that provision; and with slavery fell the laws of all 
the States providing for slavery, every one of them. ' I do not 
see what benefit can arise from repealing them by this bill, be- 
cause, if they are not repealed by the Constitution as amended, 
this bill could not repeal them. I hope that all the States in 
which slavery formerly existed will accept that constitutional pro- 
vision in good faith. I myself accept it in good faith. Believing 
that all the laws authorizing slavery have fallen, I have advised 
the people of Kentucky, and I would advise all the States, to put 
these Africans upon the same footing that the whites are in rela- 
tion to civil rights. They have all the rights that were formerly 
accorded to the free colored population in all the States just as 
fully this day as thoy will have after this bill has passed, and 
they will continue to have them. 

" No^v, to the States belong the government of their own popu- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 211 

lation, and those Avitliiii their borders, upon all subjects. We, in 
Kentucky, prescribe punishment for those who violate the laws; 
we prescribe it for the white population; we prescribe it for the 
free African population, and we prescribe it for the slave popula- 
tion. All the laws prescribing punishment for slaves fell with 
slavery, and they were subject afterward only to the penalties 
which were inflicted upon the free colored jtopulation, they then 
being free. Slaves, for many offenses, were punished far less than 
the free colored people. No slave was sent to the penitentiary 
and punished for stealing, or any thing of that kind, whereas a 
free person was. But all these States will now, of course, remodel 
their laws upon the subject of offenses. I would advise that there 
should be but one code for all persons, black as Avell as white ; 
that there shall be one general rule for the punishment of crime 
in the different States. But, sir, the States must have time to act 
on the subject; and yet we are here preparing laws and penalties, 
and proposing to carry them into execution by military authority, 
before the States have had time to legislate, and even before some 
of their Legislatures have had time to convene. 

"Kentucky has had her share of talking here, and, sir, she 
has had her share of suffering during the war. At one time she 
was invaded by three armies of the rebellion; all but seven or 
eight counties of the State, at one time, were occupied by its ar- 
mies, and her w^hole territory devastated by guerrillas. We have 
suffered in this war. We have borne it as best we could. We 
feel it intensely that now, at the end of the war, we should be 
subjected to a military despotism, our houses liable to be entered 
at any time when our families are at rest, by military men who 
can arrest and send to prison without warrant, and we are obliged 
to go, and we are obliged to pay any fines they may impose. I 
do not believe that you will lose any thing if you pause before 
passing such legislation as this, and establishing these military 
despotisms, for Ave do not know where they ai'e to end." 

]\Ir. Hendricks, of Indiana, had proposed to strike out the last 
clause of the bill, which provided that "such part of the laud 
and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia," as should 
be necessary, might be employed to prevent the violation, and en- 
force the due execution of this act. The Senator from Indiana 
opposed the bill on the ground that it employed the machinery 



U2 THE THIBTY-JflJfTH COJfGBESS. 

of the Fivntivc Slave Law, and that it was to be enforced by the 
military authority of the United States. He said : 

" This bill is a wasp ; its sting is in its tail. Sir, what is this 
bill ? It provides, in the first place, that the civil rights of all 
men, without regard to color, shall be equal ; and, in the second 
place, that if any man shall violate that principle by his conduct, 
he shall be responsible to the court ; that he may be prosecuted 
criminally and punished for the crime, or he may be sued in a 
civil action and damages recovered by the party wronged. Is not 
that broad enough? Do Senators want to go further than this? 
To recognize the civil rights of the colored people as equal to the 
civil rights of the white people, I understand to be as far as Sen- 
ators desire to go ; in the language of the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. Sumner], to place all men upon an equality before 
the law ; and that is proposed in regard to their civil rights." 

In reference to the reenactment of the odious features of the 
Fugitive Slave Law in this bill, Mr. Hendricks said : " I recol- 
lect how the blood of the people was made to run cold within 
them when it was said that the white man was required to run 
after the fugitive slave; that the law of 1850 made you and me, 
my brother Senators, slave-catchers; that the posse comitatus 
could be called to execute a writ of the law, for the recovery of 
a runaway slave, under the provisions of the Constitution of the 
United States ; and the whole country was agitated because of it. 
Now slavery is gone ; the negro is to be established upon a plat- 
form of civil equality with the white man. That is the proposi- 
tion. But we do not stop there; we arc to reenact a law that 
nearly all of you said was wicked and wrong; and for what pur- 
pose? Not to pursue the negro any longer; not for the purpose 
of catching him ; not for the purpose of catching the great crimi- 
nals of the land ; but for the purpose of placing it in the power 
of any deputy marshal in any county of the country to call upon 
you and me, and all the body of the people, to pursue some white 
man who is running for his liberty, because some negro has 
charged him with denying to him equal civil rights with the 
white man. I thought, sir, that that frame-work was enough ; I 
thought, when you placed under the command of the marshal, in 
every county of the land, all the body of the people, and put 
every one upon the track of the fleeing white man, that that was 
enough ; but it is not. For the purpose of the enforcement of 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 213 

this law, tlie President is autliorizcd to appoint somebody who is 
to have the command of the military and naval forces of the 
United States— for what purpose? To prevent a violation of this 
law, and to execute it. 

"You clothe the marshals under this bill with all the powers 
that were given to the marshals under the Fugitive Slave Law. 
That was regarded as too arbitrary in its provisions, and you re- 
pealed it. You said it should not stand upon the statute-book 
any longer; that no man, white or black, should be pursued 
under the provisions of that law. Now, you reenact it, and you 
claim it as a merit and an ornament to the legislation of the 
country ; and you add an army of officers and clothe them with 
the power to call upon any body and every body to pursue the 
running white man. That is not enough, but you must have the 
military to be called in, at the pleasure of whom? Such a person 
as the President may authorize to call out the military forces. 
Where it shall be, and to whom this power shall be given, we 
do not know." 

Mr. Lane, of Indiana, replied to the argument of his colleague. 
He said : " It is true that many of the provisions of this bill, 
changed in their purpose and object, are almost identical with the 
provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law, and they are denounced by 
my colleague in their present application; but I have not heard 
any denunciation iOrom my colleague, or from any of those associated 
with him, of the provisions of that Fugitive Slave Law which was 
enacted in the interest of slavery, and for purposes of oppression, 
and w^iich Avas an unworthy, cowardly, disgraceful concession to 
Southern opinion by Northern politicians. I have suffered no 
suitable opportunity to escape me to denomice the monstrous char- 
acter of that Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. All these provisions 
were odious and disgraceful in my opinion, when applied in the 
interest of slavery, Avhen the object was to strike down the rights 
of man. But here the purpose is changed. These provisions are 
in the interest of freemen and of freedom, and what was odious in 
the one case becomes highly meritorious in the other. It is an 
instance of poetic justice and of apt retribution that God has caused 
the wrath of man to praise Him. I stand by every provision of 
this bill, drawn as it is from that most iniquitious fountain, the 
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. 

" Then my colleague asks. Why do you invoke the power of the 



214 THE TEIETT-JriJVTH CO^'GRESS. 

military to enforce these laws? And he says that constables, and 
sheriffs, and marshals, when they have process to serve, have a 
right to call upon the posse comitatus, the body of the whole 
people, to enforce their writs. Here is a justice of the peace in 
South Carolina or Georgia, or a county court, or a circuit court, 
that is called upon to execute this law. They appoint their own 
marshal, their deputy marshal, or their constable, and he calls 
upon the posse comitatus. Neither the judge, nor the jury, nor 
the officer, as we believe, is willing to execute the law. He may 
call upon the peojile, the body of the whole people, a body of 
rebels steeped in treason and rebellion to their lips, and they are 
to execute it; and the gentleman seems wonderfully astonished 
that we should call upon the military power. We should not 
legislate at all if we believed the State courts could or w^ould 
honestly carry out the provisions of the constitutional amendment ; 
but because we believe they will not do that, we give the Federal 
officers jurisdiction. 

" But Avhat harm is to result from it ? Who is to be oppressed ? 
What Avhite man fleeing, in the language of my colleague, pur- 
sued by these harpies of the law, is in danger of having his rights 
stricken down? What does the bill provide? It places all men 
upon an equality, and unless the white man violates the law, he 
is in no danger. It takes no rights from any white man. It 
simply places others on the same platform upon which he stands ; 
and if he would invoke the power of local, prejudice to override 
the laws of the country, this is no Government unless the military 
may be called in to enforce the order of the civil courts and obe- 
dience to the laws of the country." 

Mr. Wilson, of IMassachusetts, said, in answer to some objec- 
tions to the bill urged by Mr. Guthrie : " The Senator tells us 
that the emancipated men ought to have their civil rights, that 
the black codes fell with slavery; but the Senator forgets that at 
least six of the reorganized States in their new Legislatures have 
passed laws wholly incompatible with the freedom of these freed- 
men ; and so atrocious are the jjrovisions of these laws, and so 
persistently are they carried into effijct by the local authorities, 
that General Thomas, in Mississippi, General Swayne, in Ala- 
bama, General Sickles, in South Carolina, and General Terry, in 
Virginia, have issued jiositive orders, forbidding the execution of 
the black laws that have just been passed. . 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 215 

"So unjust, so wicked, so incompatible are these new black 
laws of the rebel States, made in defiance of the expressed will of 
the nation, that Tiicutenant-n:eneral Grant has been forced to is- 
sue that order, which sets aside the black laws of all these rebell- 
ious States against the freedmen, and allows no law to be en- 
forced against them that is not enforced equally against white men. 
This order, issued by General Grant, will be respected, obeyed, 
and enforced in the rebel States with the military power of the 
nation. Southern legislators and people must learn, if -they are 
compelled to learn by the bayonets of the Army of the United 
States, that the civil rights of the freedmen must be and shall be 
respected ; that these freedmen are as free as their late masters ; 
that they shall live under the same laws, be tried for their viola- 
tion in the same manner, and if found guilty, punished in the 
same manner and degree. 

"This measure is called for, because these reconstructed Legis- 
latures, in defiance of the rights of the freedmen, and the will of 
the nation, embodied in the amendment to the Constitution, have 
enacted laws nearly as iniquitous as the old slave codes that dark- 
ened the legislation of other days. The needs of more than four 
million colored men imperatively call for its enactment. The 
Constitution authorizes and the national will demands it. By a 
series of legislative acts, by executive proclamations, by militaiy 
orders, and by the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution 
by the people of the United States, the gigantic system of human 
slavery that darkened the land, controlled the policy, and swayed 
the destinies of the republic has forever perished. Step by step 
we have marched right on from one victory to another, with the 
music of broken fetters ringing in our ears. None of the series 
of acts in this beneficent legislation of Congress, none of the 
proclamations of the Executive, none of these military orders, 
protecting rights secured by law, will ever be revoked or- amended 
by the voice of the American people. There is now 

" 'Xo slave beneath that starry flag, 
The emblem of the free.' 

" By the will of the nation freedom and free institutions for all, 
chains and fetters for none, are forever incorporated in the fun- 
damental law of regenerated and united America. Slave codes 
and auction blocks, chains and fetters and blood-hounds, are things 



216 THE THIRTY- J^IjYTH COJVGEESS. 

of the j^ast, and the chattel stands forth a man, with the rights 
and the powers of the freemen. For the better security of these 
new-born civil rights we are now about to pass the greatest and 
the grandest act in this series of acts that have emancipated a 
race and disiuthralled a. nation. It will pass, it will go upon the 
statute-book of the republic by the voice of the American people, 
and there it will remain. From the verdict of Congress in favor 
of this great measure, no appeal will ever be entertained by the 
people of the United States." 

Mr. Cowan spoke again, and denounced the section of the bill 
which provided for its enforcement by the military. He said: 
" There it is ; words can not make it plainer ; reason can not eluci- 
date it; no language can strengthen it or weaken it, one way or 
the other. There is the question whether a military man, edu- 
cated in a military school, accustomed to supreme command, un- 
accustomed to the administration of civil law among a free people, 
is to be intrusted with these aj^pellate jurisdiction over the courts 
of the country ; whether he can in any way, whether he ought in 
any way, to be intrusted with such a power. I, for my part, will 
never agree to it ; and I should feel myself recreant to every duty 
that I owed to myself, to my country, to my country's history, 
and I may say to the race which has been for hundreds and 
thousands of years endeavoring to attain to something like con- 
stitutional liberty, if I did not resist this and all similar 
projects." 

Mr. Trumbull answered some objections to the bill, " The 
Senator from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] objects to the bill because 
he says that the same provisions which were enacted in the old 
Fugitive Slave Law are incorporated into this, and that it has 
been heralded to the country that it was a great achievement to 
do this; and he insists that if those provisions of law were 
odious and wicked and wrong which provided for punishing 
men for aiding the slave to escape, therefore they must be wicked 
and wrong now when they are employed for the punishing a 
man who undertakes to put a person into slavery. Sir, that 
does not follow at all. A law may be iniquitous and unjust and 
wrong which undertakes to punish another for doing an innocent 
act, whicli would be righteous and just and proper to punish a 
man for doing a wicked act. "We have upon our statute-books a 
law punlsliing a man who commits murder, because the commis- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 217 

sion of murder is a lilgh crime, and tlic party who docs it for- 
feits his right to live; but wouhl it be just to apply the law 
which punishes a person for committing murder to an innocent 
person who had killed another accidentally, without malice? That 
is the diHerence. It is the difference between right and wrong, 
between good and evil. True, the features of the Fugitive Slave 
Law w^ere abominable when they were used for the purpose of 
punishing, not negroes, as the Senator from Indiana says, but 
W'hite men. The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted for the pur- 
pose of punishing white men who aided to give the natural gift 
of liberty to those who were enslaved. Now, sir, we propose to 
use the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law for the purpose of 
punishing those who deny freedom, not those who seek to aid 
persons to escape to freedom. The difference was too clearly 
pointed out by the colleague of the Senator [Mr. Lane] to justify 
me in taking further time in alluding to it. 

"But the Senator objects to this bill because it authorizes the 
calling in of the military ; and he asserts that it is the only law 
in which the military is brought in to enforce it. The Senator 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] follows this up with a half 
hour's speech, denouncing this law as obnoxious to the objection 
that it is a military law, that it is taking the trial of persons for 
offenses out of the hands of the courts and placing them under 
the military — a monstrous proposition, he says. Is that so? 
AVhat is the law ? 

" It is a court bill ; it is to be executed through the courts, 
and in no other way. But does the Senator mean to say it is a 
military bill because the military may be called in, in aid of the 
execution of the law through the courts ? Does the Senator from 
Pennsylvania — I should like his attention, and that of the Sena- 
tor from Indiana, too — deny the authority to call in the miHtary 
in aid of the execution of the law through the courts ? 

" Let me read a clause from the Constitution, which seems to 
have been forgotten by the Senator from Pennsylvania and the 
Senator from Indiana. The Senator from Pennsylvania, who has 
denounced this law, has been living under just such a law for 
thirty years, and it seems never found it out. What says the 
Constitution ? ' Congress shall have power to provide for calling 
forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union.' 

" Then, can not the militia prevent persons from violating the 



2 IS THE T^IRTY-^''IJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

law? Thcv are autliorized by the Constitution to be called out 
for the purpose of executing the law, and here we have a law 
that is to be carried into execution, and when you find persons 
combined together to prevent its execution, you can not do any 
thing with them! Suppose that the county authorities in Mus- 
cogee County, Georgia, combine together to deny civil rights to 
to every colored man in that county. For the purpose of pre- 
venting it, before they have done any act, I say the militia may 
be called out to prevent them "from committing an act. We are 
not required to wait until the act is committed before any thing 
can be done. That was the doctrine which led to this rebellion, 
that we had no authority to do any thing till the conflict of arms 
came. I believed then, in 1860, that w^e had authority ; and if 
it had been properly exercised, if the men who were threatening 
rebellion, who were in this chamber defying the authority of the 
Government, had been arrested for treason — of which, in my 
judgment, by setting on foot armed expeditions against the coun- 
try, they were guilty — and if they had been tried and punished 
and executed for the crime, I doubt whether this great rebellion 
would ever have taken place. 

"There is another statute to which I beg leave to call the 
attention of the Senator from Pennsylvania, and under Avhich 
he has lived for thirty years without ever having known it; 
and his rights have been fully protected. I wish to call atten- 
tion to a section from which the tenth section of the bill under 
consideration, at which the Senator from Indiana is so horrified, 
is copied word for word, and letter for letter. The act of IMarch 
10, 1836, ' supplementary to an act entitled " An act in addition 
to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the 
United States, and to repeal the acts therein mentioned," ap- 
proved 20th of April, 1818,' contains the very section that is in 
this bill, word for word. It did not horrify the country ; it did 
not destroy all the liberties of the people; it did not consolidate 
all the powers of the Constitution in the Federal Government ; 
it did not overthrow the courts, and it has existed now for 
thirty years ! " 

The ([ucstion was first taken on the amendment offered by Mr. 
Hendricks, to strike out the tenth section of the bill. The vote 
resulted yeas, twelve ; nays, thirty-four. 

At this stage of the proceedings, :Mr. Saulsbury moved to 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 219 

amend the bill by adding in the first section of the bill after the 
■words "civil rights," the words, "except the right to vote in 
the States." He desired that if the Senate did not wish to con- 
fer the right of suffrage by this bill, they should say so. The 
question being taken on Mr. Saulsbury's amendment, the vote 
resulted seven in the affirniative and thirty-nine in the negative. 
The vote was finally taken on the passage of the bill, which 
resulted thirty-three in the affirmative and twelve in the nega- 
tive. The following Senators voted in favor of the bill: 

Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Connor, Cragin, Dixon, Fes- 
senden, Foot, Foster, Harris, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Henry 
S. Lane, James H. Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, 
Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Williams, 
"Wilson, and Yates — 33. 

The following voted against the bill, namely : 

Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Guthrie, Hendricks, McDougall, Nes- 
mith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, Stockton, and Van Winkle— 12. 

Five Senators were absent, to wit : 

Messrs. Creswell, Doolittle, Grimes, Johnson, and Wright — 5. 



220 THE TEIHTY-KIMTH COJ^GBESS. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

The Bill kefeured to the Judiciary Committee axd reported back — 
Speech by the Chairman of the Committee — Mr. Kogers — Mr. Cook — 
Mr. Thayer — Mr. Eldridge — Mr. Thornton — Mr. Windom — Mr. Shel- 

LABARGER — Mr. BrOOMALL — Mr. RaYMOND — Mr. DeLANO — Mr. KeRR — 

Amendment by Mr. Bingham — His Speech — Reply by his Colleague — 
Discussion closed by Mr. Wilson — Yeas and Nays on the Passage of 
the Bill — Mr. Le Blond's proposed title — Amendments of the House 
accepted BY the Senate. 

ON the 5th of February^ four days after the passage of the Civil 
Rights Bill in the Senate, it came before the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and having been read a first and second time, was 
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. On the 1st of ISIarch, 
the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Wilson, brought 
the bill again before the House, proposing some verbal amend- 
ments which were adopted. He then made a motion to recommit 
the bill, pending which, he made a s|)eech on the merits of the 
measure. He referred to many definitions, judicial decisions, 
opinions, and precedents, under which negroes were entitled to 
the rights of American citizenship. In reference to the results 
of his researches, he said : 

" Precedents, both judicial and legislative, are found in sharp 
conflict concerning them. The line which divides these prece- 
dents is generally found to be the same which separates the early 
from the later days of the republic. The further the Govern- 
ment drifted from the old moorings of equality and human rights, 
the more numerous became judicial and legislative utterances in 
conflict with some of the leading features of this bill." 

He argued that the section of the bill providing for its enforce- 
ment by the military arm was necessary, in order " to fortify the 
declaratory portions of this bill with such sanctions as will render 
it effective." In conclusion he said : 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 221 

"Can not protection be rendered to the citizen in the mode 
prescribed by the measure we now have under consideration? 
If not, a perpetual state of constructive war would be a great 
blessing to very many American citizens. If a suspension of 
martial law and a restoration of the ordinary forms of civil law 
are to result in a subjection of our people to the outrages under 
the operation of State laws and municipal ordinances which these 
orders now prevent, then it were better to continue the present 
state of affairs forever. But such is not the case; we may pro- 
vide by law for the same ample protection through the civil 
courts that now depends on the orders of our military command- 
ers; and I will never consent to any other construction of our 
Constitution, for that would be the elevation of the military above 
the civil j)ower. 

"Before our Constitution was formed, the great fundamental 
rights which I have mentioned belonged to every person who 
became a member of our great national family. No one surren- 
dered a jot or tittle of these rights by consenting to the formation 
of the Government. The entire machinery of Government, as 
organized by the Constitution, was designed, among other things, 
to secure a more perfect enjoyment of these rights. A legislative 
department was created, that laws necessary and proper to this 
end might be enacted; a judicial department was erected to 
expound and administer the laws ; an executive department was 
formed for the purpose of enforcing and seeing to the execution 
of these laws; and these several, departments of Government 
possess the power to enact, administer, and enforce the laws 
* necessary and proper' to secure those rights which existed ante- 
rior to the ordination of the Constitution. Any other view of the 
powers of this Government dwarfs it, and renders it a failure in 
its most important office. 

"Upon this broad principle I rest my justification of this bill. 
I assert that we possess the power to do those things which gov- 
ernments are organized to do ; that we may protect a citizen of 
the United States against a violation of his rights by the law of 
a single State; that by our laws and our courts we may inter- 
vene to maintain the proud character of American, citizenship; 
that this power permeates our whole system, is a part of it, with- 
out which the States can run riot over every fundamental right 
belonging to citizens of the United States; that the right to 



M2 TEE THIRTY-J\''I:N'TE: COJ\^GItESS. 

exercise this jiowcr depends upon no express delegation, but runs 
with the rights it is designed to protect ; that we possess the same 
latitude in respect to the selection of means through which to ex- 
ercise this power that belongs to us when a power rests upon ex- 
press delegation ; and that the decisions which support the latter 
maintain the former. And here, sir, I leave the bill to the con- 
sideration of the House." 

Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, followed with an argument against 
the bill, because it interfered with " States' Rights." Under its 
provisions, Congi'ess would " enter the domain of a State and in- 
terfere with its internal police, statutes, and domestic regulations." 
He said: 

"This act of legislation would destroy the foundations of the 
Government as they were laid and established by our fathers, 
who reserved to the States certain privileges and immunities 
which ought sacredly to be preserved to them. 

" If you had attempted to do it in the days of those who were 
living at the time the Constitution was made, after the birth of 
that noble instrument, the spirit of the heroes of the Revolution and 
the ghosts of the departed who laid down their lives in defense 
of the liberty of this country and of the rights of the States, 
would have come forth as witnesses against the deadly infliction, 
and the destruction of the fundamental principle of the sover- 
eignty of the States in violation of the Constitution, and the 
breaking down of the ties that bind the States, and the violation 
of the rights and liberties of the white men and white women of 
America. 

" If you pass this bill, you will allow the negroes of this coun- 
try to compete for the high office of President of the United 
States. Because if they are citizens at all, they come within the 
meaning and letter of the Constitution of the United States, 
which allows all natural-born citizens to become candidates for 
the Presidency, and to exercise the duties of that office if elected. 

" I am afraid of degrading this Government ; I am afraid of 
danger to constitutional liberty ; I am alarmed at the stupendous 
strides which this Congress is trying to initiate; and I appeal 
in behalf of .my country, in behalf of those that are to come after 
us, of generations yet unborn, as well as those now living, that 
conservative men on the other side should rally to the standard 
of sovereign and independent States, and blot out this idea which 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 223 

is inculcatiii-g itself here, that all the powers of the States must 
be taken away, and the power of the Czar of Russia or the Em- 
peijor of France must be lodged in the Federal Government. 

" I ask yoii to stand by the law of the country, and to regulate 
these Federal and State systems upon the grand principles upon 
which they were intended to be regulated, that we may hand 
down to tliose who are to come after us this bright jewel of civil 
liberty unimpaired ; and I say that the Congress or the men who 
will strip the people of these rights will be handed down to i)cr- 
dition for allowing this bright and beautiful heritage of civil lib- 
erty embodied in the powers and sovereign jurisdiction of the 
States to pass away iVom us. 

"I am willing to trust brave men — men who have shown as 
much bravery as those who were engaged on battle-fields against 
the armed legions of the North ; because I believe that even when 
they were fighting against the flag of their country, the great 
mass of those people w^ere moved by high and conscientious con- 
victions of duty. And in the spirit of Christianity, in the spirit 
which Jesus Christ exercised when he gave up his own life as 
a propitiation for a fallen world, I would say to those Southern 
men, Come here in the Halls of Congress, and participate with us 
in passing laws which, if constitutionally carried into effect, wall 
control the interests and destinies of four millions people, mostly 
living within the limits of your States.'* 

Mr. Cook, of Illinois, replied : " Mr. Speaker, in listening to 
the very eloquent remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Rogers], I have been astonished to find that in his appre- 
hension this bill is designed to deprive somebody, in some State 
of this Union, of some right which he has heretofore enjoyed. I 
am only sorry that he was not specific enough ; that he did not inform 
us what rights are to be taken away. He has denounced this bill 
as dangerous to liberty, as calculated in its tendency at least to 
destroy the liberties of this country. I have examined this bill 
with some care, and, so far as I have been able to understand it, 
I have found nothing in any provision of it which tends in any 
way to take from any man, white or black, a single right he en- 
joys under the Constitution and laws of the United States. 

"I would have been glad if he would have told us in what 
manner the white men of this country would have been j)laced in 
a worse condition than they arc now, if this becomes the law. 



2^4 THE THIRTY-JilJfTH COJfGBESS. 

This general denunciation and general assault of the bill, without 
pointing out one single thing which is to deprive one single man 
of any right he enjoys under the Government, seems to me ^ot 
entitled to much weight. 

" When those rights which are enumerated in this bill are de- 
nied to any class of men, on account of race or color, when they 
are subject to a system of vagrant laws which sells them into 
slavery or involuntary servitude, which operates upon them as 
upon no other part of the community, they are not secured in the 
rights of freedom. If a man can be sold, the man is a slave. If 
he is nominally freed by the amendment to the Constitution, he 
has nothing in the world he can call his own; he has simply the 
labor of his hands on which he can depend. Any combination 
of men in his neighborhood can prevent him from having any 
chance to support himself by his labor. They can pass a law that 
a man not supporting himself by labor shall be deemed a vagrant, 
and that a vagrant shall be sold. If this is the freedom we gave 
the men who have been fighting for us and in defense of the Gov- 
ernment, if this is all we have secured them, the President had 
far better never have issued the Proclamation of Emancipation, 
and the country had far better never have adopted the great or- 
dinance of freedom. 

" Does any man in this House believe that these people can be 
safely left in these States without the aid of Federal legislation or 
military power? Does any one believe that their freedom can be 
preserved Avithout this aid? If any man does so believe, he is 
strangely blind to the history of the past year; strangely blind to 
the enactments passed by Legislatures touching these freedmen. 
And I shuddered as I heard the honorable gentleman from New 
Jersey []\Ir. Pogers] claiming that he was speaking and thinking 
in the spirit which animated the Savior of mankind when he 
made atonement for our race; that it was in that spirit he was 
acting when he was striving to have these people left utterly de- 
fenseless in the hands of men who were proving, day by day, 
month by month, that they desire to oppress them, for they had 
been made free against their consent. Every act of legislation, 
every expression of opinion on their part, proves that these peo- 
ple M'ould be again enslaved if they were not protected by the 
military arm of the Federal Government; without that they 
would be slaves to-day. And I submit, with all deference, that 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 225 

it is any thing but the spirit Avhich the gentleman claims to have 
exercised, which prompted the argument he has made. 

"For myself, I trust that this bill will be passed, because I 
consider it the most appropriate means to secure the cud desired, 
and that these people will be protected. ' I trust that we will say 
to them, Because upon our call you aided us to suppress this re- 
bellion, because the honor and faith of the nation were pledged 
for your jn-otection, we will maintain your freedom, and redeem 
that pledge." 

On the following day, the House of Representatives resumed 
the consideration of this bill. A speech was made by Mr. Thayer, 
of Pennsylvania. He said : 

" This bill is the just sequel to, and the proper completion of, 
that great measure of national redress which opened the dungeon- 
doors of four million human beings. Without this, in my judg- 
ment, that great act of justice will be paralyzed and made useless. 
With this, it will "have practical effect, life, vigor, and enforce- 
ment. It has been the fashion of gentlemen, holding a certain 
set of opinions, in this House to characterize that great measure 
to which I have referred as a revolutionary measure. 

" Sir, it was a revolutionary measure. It was one of the great- 
est, one of the most humane, one of the most beneficial revolu- 
tions which ever characterized the history of a free State; but it 
was a revolution which, though initiated by the conflict of arms 
and rendered necessary as a measure of war against the public 
enemy, was accomplished within and under the provisions of the 
Constitution of the United States. It was a revolution for the 
relief of human nature, a revolution which gave life, liberty, and 
hope to millions whose condition, until then, appeared to be one 
of hopeless despair. It was a revolution of which no freeman 
need be ashamed, of which every man who assisted in it will, I 
am sure, in the future be proud, and which will illumine with a 
great glory the history of this country. 

" There is nothing in this bill in respect to the employment of 
military force that is not already in the Constitution of the United 
States. The power here conferred is expressly given by that in- 
strument, and has been exercised upon the most stupendous scale 
in the suppression of the rebellion. What is this bill ? I hope 
gentlemen, even on the oj^posite side of the House, will not suf- 
fer their minds to be influenced by any such vague, loose, and 
15 



THE TEIRTY-^nKTH COMGBESS. 

groundless denunciations as these which have proceeded from the 
gentleman from New Jersey. The bill, after extending these 
fundamental immunities of citizenship to all classes of people in the 
United States, simply provides means for the enforcement of 
these rights and immunities. How? Not by military force, 
not through the instrumentality of military commanders, not 
through any military machinery whatever, but through the quiet, 
dignified, firm, and constitutional forms of judicial procedure. 
The bill seeks to enforce these rights in the same manner and 
with the same sanctions under and by which other laws of the 
United States are enforced. It imposes duties upon the judicial 
tribunals of the country which require the enforcement of these 
rio-hts. It provides for the administration of laws to protect these 
rights. It provides for the execution of laws to enforce them. 
Is there any thing appalling in that? Is that a military despot- 
ism ? Sir, it is a strange abuse of language to say that a mili- 
tary despotism is established by wholesome and equal laws. Yet 
the gentleman declaimed by the hour, in vague and idle terms, 
against this bill, which has not a single offensive, oppressive, 
unjust, unusual, or tyrannical feature in it. These civil rights 
and immunities which are to be secured, and which no man can 
conscientiously say ought to be denied, are to be enforced through 
the ordinary instrumentalities of courts of justice. 

" While engaged in this great work of restoration, it concerns 
our honor that we forget not those who are unable to help them- 
selves ; who, whatever may have been the misery and wretched- 
ness of their former condition, were on our side in the great 
struggle which has closed, and whose rights we can not disregard 
or neglect without violating the most sacred obligations of duty 
and of honor. To us they look for protection against the wrongs 
with which they are threatened. To us alone can they appeal in 
their helplessness for succor and defense. To us they hold out 
to-day their supplicating hands, asking for protection for them- 
selves and their posterity. We can not disregard this appeal, 
and stand acquitted before the country and the world of basely 
abandoning to a miserable fate those who have a right to demand 
the protection of your flag and the immunities guaranteed to 
every freeman by your Constitution." 

:Mr. Eld ridge, of Wisconsin, opposed the bill, in a speech of 
which the following are the concluding remarks : 



CIVIL EIGHTS BILL, 227 

"I had hoped that this subject woiikl be allowed to rest. Gen- 
tlemen refer us to individual cases of wrong perpetrated upon the 
freedmen of the South as an argument why we should extend the 
Federal authority into the different States to control the action of 
the citizens thereof. But, I ask, has not the South submitted to 
the altered state of things there, to the late amendment of the 
Constitution, to the loss of their slave property, with a cheerful- 
ness and grace that we did not exjjcct? Have they not acqui- 
esced more willingly than we dared to hope? Then why not 
trust them ? Why not meet them with frankness and kindness ? 
Why not encourage them with trust and confidence ? 

" I deprecate all these measures because of the implication they 
carry upon their face, that the people who have heretofore owned 
slaves intend to do them wrong. I do not believe it. So. far as 
my knowledge goes, and so far as my information extends, I be- 
lieve that the people who have held the freedmen slaves will treat 
them with more kindness, with more leniency, than those of the 
North who make such loud professions of love and affection for 
them, and are so anxious to pass these bills. They know their 
nature; they know their wants; they know their habits; they 
have been brought up together, and have none of the prejudices 
and unkind feelings which many in the North would have toward 
them. 

" I do not credit all these stories about the general feeling of 
hostility in the South toward the negro. So far as I have heard 
opinions expressed upon that subject, and I have conversed with 
many persons from that section of the country, they do not blame 
the negro for any thing that has happened. As a general thing, 
he was faithful to them and their interests until the army reached 
the place and took him from them. He has supported their wives 
and children in the absence of the husbands and fathers in the 
armies of the South. He has done for them what no one else 
could have done. They recognize his general good feeling toward 
them, and are inclined to reciprocate that feeling toward him. 

" I believe that is the general feeling of the Southern people 
to-day. The cases of ill-treatment are exceptional cases. They 
are like the cases which have occurred in the Northern States 
where the unfortunate have been thrown upon our charity. 
Take for instance the stories of the cruel treatment of the insane 
in the State of Massachusetts. They may have been barbarously 



228 THE THIBTY-KIKTH COJfGRESS. 

confined in the loathsome dens, as stated in particular instances, 
but is that any evidence of the general ill-will of the people of 
the State of Massachusetts toward the insane ? Is that any rea- 
son why the Federal arm should be extended to Massachusetts to 
control and protect the insane there? 

" It has also been said that certain paupers in certain States 
have been badly used — paupers, too, who were whites. Is that 
any reason why we should extend the arm of the Federal Gov- 
ernment to those States to protect the poor who are thrown upon 
the charities of the people there ? 

" Sii', we must yield to the altered state of things in this 
country. We must trust the people ; it is our duty to do so ; we 
can not do otherwise. And the sooner we place ourselves in a 
position where we can win the confidence of our late enemies, 
where our counsels will be heeded, where our advice may be re- 
garded, the sooner will the people of the whole country be fully 
reconciled to each other and their changed relationship ; the sooner 
will all the inhabitants of our country be in the possession of all the 
rights and immunities essential to their prosperity and haj)piness." 

Mr. Thornton, of IllinoLs, feared there was " something hidden, 
something more than appears in the language" of the bill. He 
feared " a design to confer the right of suffrage upon the negro," 
and urged that a proviso should be accepted '^restricting the 
meaning of the words ' civil rights and immunities.' " He re- 
marked further : " The most serious objection that I have to this 
bill is, that it is an interference with the rights of the South. It 
was remarked by my friend from Wisconsin that it has often been 
intimated on this floor, and throughout the country, that whenever 
a man talks about either the Constitution or the rights of the States, 
he is either a traitor or a sympathizer with treason. I do not as- 
sume that the States are sovereign. They are subordinate to the 
Federal Government. Sovereignty in this country is in the peo- 
ple, but the States have certain rights, and those rights are abso- 
lutely necessary to the maintenance of our system of government. 
What are those rights? The right to determine and fix the legal 
status of the inhabitants of the respective States ; the local powers 
of self-government; the power to regulate all the relations that 
exist between husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and 
ward ; all the fireside and home rights, which are nearer and dearer 
to us than all others. 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 229 

" Sir, this is but a stepping-stone to a centralization of the 
Government and tlic overthrow of the local powers of the States. 
Whenever that is consummated, then farewell to the beauty, 
strength, and power of this Government. There is nothing left 
but absolute, despotic, central power. It lives no longer but as 
a naked despotism. There is nothing left to admire and to 
cherish." 

Mr. Windom, of IMinnesota, next obtained the floor. Referring 
to the speech of Mr. Rogers, he said : " I wish to make another 
extract from the speech of the gentleman from New Jersey. He 
said, ^ If you pass this bill, you will allow negroes to compete for 
the high office of the President of the United States.' You will 
actually allow them to compete for the Presidency of the United 
States ! As for this fear which haunts the gentleman from New 
Jersey, if there is a negro in the country who is so far above all 
the white men of the country that only four millions of his own 
race can elect him President of the United States over twenty-six 
millions of white people, I think we ought to encourage such 
talent in the country. 

"Sir, the gentleman has far less confidence in the white race 
than I have, if he is so timid in regard to negro competition. 
Does he really suppose that black men are so far superior to 
white men that four millions of them can elect a President of 
their own race against the wishes of thirty millions of ours? 
Ever since I knew any thing of the party to which the gentle- 
man belongs, it Jias entertained this same morbid fear of negro 
competition ; and sometimes I have thought that if we were to 
contemplate the subject from their stand-point we would have 
more charity than we do for this timidity and nervous dread 
which haunts them. I beg leave, however, to assure the gentle- 
man that there is not the slightest danger of electing a black 
President, and that he need never vote for one, unless he thinks 
him better fitted for the office than a white man." 

With more direct reference to the merits of the question, Mr. 
AVindom said : " Our warrant for the passage of this bill is found 
in the genius and spirit of our institutions ; but not in these alone. 
Fortunately, the great amendment which broke the shackles from 
every slave in the land contains an express provision that ' Con- 
gress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legis- 
lation.' 



'230 THE THIRTT-MIJfTH COJVGRESS. 

'* "When tills amendment was acted upon, it was well understood, 
as it is now, that although the body of slavery might be destroyed, 
its spirit would still live in the hearts of those who have sacrificed 
so much for its preservation, and that if the freedmen were left to 
the tender mercy of their former masters, to M'hose heartless self- 
ishness has been superadded a malignant desire for vengeance 
upon the negro for having aided us in crushing the rebellion, his 
condition would be more intolerable than it was before the war. 
And hence the broad grant of power was made to enable Congress 
to enforce the spirit as well as the letter of the amendment. Now, 
sir, in what way is it proposed to enforce it? By denying to any 
one man a single right or privilege which he could otherwise con- 
stitutionally or properly enjoy? No. By conferring on any one 
person or class of persons a single right or immunity which every 
other person may not possess? By no means. Does it give to 
the loyal negro any preference over the recent would-be assassins 
of the nation ? Not at all. It merely declares that hereafter there 
shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the 
citizens of any State or territory of the United States on account 
of race, color, or previous condition of slavery, and that every 
person, except such as are excluded by reason of crime, shall have 
the same right to enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give 
evidence, to inherit, purchase, sell, hold, and convey real and per- 
sonal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and pro- 
ceedings for the security of person and property, and shall be 
subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none 
other. 

"We know, and the whole world knows, that when in the 
hour of our extremity we called upon the black race to aid us, 
we promised them not liberty only, but all that that word liberty 
implies. All remember how unwilling we were to do any thing 
which would inure to the benefit of the negro. I recall Avith 
shame the fact that when, five years ago, the so-called Democ- 
racy — now Egyptians — were here in this capital, in the White 
House, in the Senate, and on this floor, plotting the destruction 
of the Government, and we were asked to appease them by sacri- 
ficing the negro, two-thirds of both houses voted to rivet his 
chains upon him so long as the republic should endure. A widen- 
ing chasm yawned between the free and slave States, and we looked 
wildly around for that wherewith it might be closed. In our ex- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 2-31 

trcmity wc seized upon the uegro, bound and helpless, and tried to 
cast him in. But an overruling Providence heard the cries of the 
oppressed, and hurled his oppressors into that chasm by hundreds 
of thousands, until the whole land was filled w^ith mourning, yet 
still the chasm yawned. In our anguish and terror, we felt that 
the whole nation would be speedily ingulfed in one common ruin. 
It was then that the great emancipator and savior of his country, 
Abraham Lincoln, saw the danger and the remedy, and seizing 
four million bloody shackles, he wrenched them from their victims, 
and standing witli these broken manacles in his hands upraised 
toward heaven, he invoked the blessing of the God of the oppressed, 
and cast them into the fiery chasm. That offering was accepted, 
and the chasm closed. 

"AVhen the reports from Port Hudson and Fort "Wagner 
thrilled all loyal hearts by the recital of the heroic deeds of the 
black soldier, we were not reminded that if the negro were per- 
mitted to enjoy the same rights under the Government his valor 
helped to save that are possessed by the perjured traitors who 
sought its destruction, it would ' lead to a war of races.' O no ! 
Then we were in j)eril, and felt grateful even to the negro, who 
stood between us and our enemies. Then our only hope of safety 
W'as in the brave hearts and strong arms of the soldier at the front. 
Now, since by the combined efforts of our brave soldiers, white 
and black, the military power of the South has been overthrown, 
and her Representatives are as eager to resume their places on 
this floor as five years ago they were to quit them for a place in 
the rebel army, we are told that, having been victorious, it becomes 
a great nation like ours to be magnanimous. I answer, it is far 
more becoming to be just. I am willing to carry my magnanimity 
to the verge of justice, but not one step beyond. I will go watli 
him who goes furthest in acts of generosity toward our former 
enemies, unless those acts will be prejudicial to our friends. But 
when you advise me to sacrifice those who have stood by u*during 
the war, in order to conciliate unrepentant rebels, whose hearts 
still burn with ill-suppressed hatred to the Government, I scorn 
your counsel." 

Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, said : " I agree wdtli the gentleman 
on the other side of the House, that this bill can not be passed 
under that clause of the Constitution which provides that Con- 
gress may pass uniform rules of naturalization. Under that 



2S2 THE THIRTY-JflJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

clause it is my ojDinion that the act of naturalization must not 
only be the act of the Government, but also the act of the indi- 
vidual alien, by which he renounces his former allegiance and 
accepts the new one. And that proposition and distinction will 
be found, I think, in all judicious arguments upon the subject. 

" There is another class of persons well recognized, not only in 
our constitutional history, but also by the laws of nations, who are 
not foreigners, who occupy an intermediate position, and that in- 
termediate position is defined by the laws of nations by the word 
'subjects.' Subjects are all persons who, being born in a given 
country, and under a given government, do not owe an allegiance 
to any other government. 

" To that class in this country, according to the decisions of 
our courts hitherto, belong American Indians and slaves, and, 
according to the Dred Scott decision, persons of African descent 
whose ancestors were slaves. All these were subjects by every 
principle of international as well as of settled constitutional law 
in this country. 

" Now, then, to that class belong the persons who are natural- 
ized by this bill. If they were not, indeed, citizens hitherto, they 
were at least subjects of this Government, by reason of their birth, 
and by reason of the fact that they owed no foreign allegiance. 

" That brings me to the next remark, and it is this : that these 
subjects, not owing any foreign allegiance, no individual act of 
theirs is required in order to their naturalization, because they 
owe no foreign allegiance to be renounced by their individual 
acts, and because, moreover, being domiciled in our own country, 
and continuing here to reside, it is the individual election of each 
member of the tribe, or race, or class, to accept our nationality; 
therefore, no additional individual act is required in order to his 
citizenship. 

" That being proved, it is competent for the nationality, or for 
the government, wherever that subject may reside, to naturalize 
that class of persons by treaty or by general law, as is proposed 
by the amendment of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Eay- 
mond]. It is the act of the sovereign alone that is requisite to 
the naturalization of that class of persons, and it may be done 
either by a single act naturalizing entire races of men, or by 
adopting the heads of families out of those races, or it may be 
done to any extent, greater or less, that may please the sovereign. 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 233 

For this proposition, I refer gentlemen \\\\o desire to examine 
this subject to the authorities that may be found eoUected in any- 
judicious work on public law, and they will find them very fully 
collected, certainly, in the notes to Whcaton. 

"Now, then, what power may do tliat act of naturalization, 
and how may it be exercised? That is also answered by these 
same authorities. It may be done in this country either by an 
act of Congress, or it may be done by treaty. It has been done 
again and again and again in both ways in this country. It was 
done once in the case of the Choctaw Indians, as you will find 
in the Statutes-at-Large, where, in case the heads of families 
desired to remain and not to remove to the West, it was pro- 
vided by the treaty of September 27, 1830, that those families 
should be naturalized as a class. 

" Then, again, it was done in the other way, by an act of Con- 
gress, in the case cited by my learned friend from Iowa [Mr. 
Wilson], in the case of the Stockbridge Indians. 

" It was done again, as you may remember, in the case of the 
Cherokees, in December, 1835. There again a class was natur- 
alized by treaty." 

Some amendments having been proposed, the bill was recom- 
mitted to the Committee on the Judiciary, with the understand- 
ing that it should be returned for consideration on Thursday of 
the following week. 

Accordingly, on that day, March 8, the consideration of the 
bill being resumed, Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, addressed 
the House. He viewed the bill as beneficent in its provisions, 
since it made no discriminations against the Southern rebels, but 
granted them, as well as the negro, the rights of citizenship. 

"A question might naturally arise whether we ought again to 
trust those who have once betrayed us ; whether we ought to give 
them the benefits of a compact they have once repudiated. Yet 
the spii'it of forgiveness is so inherent in the American bosom, 
that no party in the country proposes to Avithhold from these 
people the advantages of citizenshiji; and this is saying much. 
With a debt that may require centuries to pay; with so many 
living and mutilated witnesses of the horrors of war; with so 
many saddened homes, so many of the widowed a.ud fatherless 
pleading for justice, for retribution, if not revenge, it speaks well 
for the cause of Christian civilization in America that no party 



234 THE THIRTr-J\''LYTH COJfGBESS. 

in the country iH'oposcs to deprive the authors of such immeas- 
urable calamity of the advantages of citizenship. 

" But the election must be made. Some public legislative act 
is necessary to show the ^Yorld that those who have forfeited all 
claims upon the Government are not to be held to the strict rigor 
of the law of their own invoking, the decision of the tribunal of 
their own choosing; that they are to be welcomed back as the 
prodigal son, whenever they are ready to return as the prodi- 
gal son. 

" The act under consideration makes that election. Its terms 
embrace the late rebels, and it gives them the rights, privileges, 
and inununities of citizens of the Uuited States, though it does 
not propose to exempt them from punishment for their past 
crimes. 

" I might consent that the glorious deeds of the last five years 
should be blotted from the country's history ; that the trophies 
won on a hundred battle-fields, the sublime visible evidences of 
the heroic devotion of America's citizen soldiery, should be burned 
on the altar of reconstruction. I might consent that the cemetery 
at Gettysburg should be razed to the ground ; that its soil should 
be submitted to the plow, and that the lamentation of the bereaved 
should give place to the lowing of cattle. But there is a point 
beyond which I will neither be forced nor persuaded. I will 
never consent that the Government shall desert its allies in the 
South, and surrender their rights and interests to the enemy, and 
in this I will make no distinction of caste or color, either among 
friends or foes." 

Mr. Raymond, of New York, was impressed with the impor- 
tance of the measure. " Whether we consider it by itself, simply 
as a proposed statute, or in its bearings upon the general question 
of -the restoration of peace and harmony to the Union, I regard 
it as one of the most important bills ever presented to this House 
for its action, worthy, in every respect, to enlist the coolest and the 
calmest judgment of every member whose vote must be recorded 
upon it." 

He was in favor of the first part of the bill, which declares 
" who shall be citizens of the United States, and declares that 
all shall be citizens Avithout distinction of race, color, or previous 
cpnditlon of servitude, who are, have been, or shall be born within 
the limits and jurisdiction of the Uuited States. 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 235 

"Now, sir, assuming, as I do, without any further argument, 
that Congress has the power of admitting to citizenship this 
great class of persons just set free by the amendment to the Con- 
stitution of the United States abolishing slavery, I suppose I need 
not dwell here on the great importance to that class of persons 
of having this boon conferred upon them. 

" We have already conferred upon them the great, inestimable, 
priceless boon of personal liberty. I can not for one moment 
yield to what seems to be a general disposition to disimrage the 
freedom we have given them. I think the fact that w^e have con- 
ferred upon four million people that personal liberty and freedom 
from servitude from this time forward for evermore, is one of the 
highest and most beneficent acts ever performed by any Govern- 
ment toward so large a class of its people. 

"Having gone thus far, I desire to go on by successive steps 
still further, and to elevate them in all respects, so far as their 
faculties will allow and our power will permit us to do, to an 
equality with the other persons and races in this country. I 
desire, as the next step in the process of elevating that race, to 
give them the rights of citizenship, or to declare by solemn stat- 
ute that they are citizens of the United States, and thus secure to 
them whatever rights, immunities, privileges, and powers belong 
as of right to all citizens of the United States. I hope no one 
will be prepared or inclined to say this is a trifling boon. If we 
do so estimate this great privilege, I fear we are scarcely in the 
frame of mind to act upon the great questions coming before us 
from day to day here. I, for one, am not prepared or inclined to 
disparage American citizenship as a personal qualification belong- 
ing to myself, or as conferred upon any of our fellow-citizens." 

Mr. Raymond expressed doubts as to the constitutionality of 
that part of the bill " that provides for that class of persons thus 
made citizens protection against anticipated inequality of legisla- 
tion in the several States." 

In this direction he was desirous of avoiding a veto. He said : 
"Moreover, on grounds of expediency, upon which I will not 
dwell, I desire myself, and I should feel much relieved if I 
thought the House fully and heartily shared my anxiety, not to 
pass here any bill which shall be intercepted on its way to the 
statute-bpok by well-grounded complaints of unconstitutionality 
on the part of any other department of the Government." 



236 THE THIBTY-KIJ^TR COJ^GRESS. 

Mr. Delauo, of Ohio, followed, expressing doubts as to the 
constitutionality of the measure. He considered it a serious in- 
fringement of the rights of the States. He said : " Now, sir, 
should this bill be passed, that law of the State might be over- 
thrown by the power of Congress. In my opinion, if Ave adopt 
the principle of this bill, "we declare, in effect, that Congress has 
authority to go into the States and manage and legislate with re- 
gard to all the personal rights of the citizen — rights of life, lib- 
erty, and property. You render this Government no longer a 
Government of limited powers ; you concentrate and consolidate 
here an extent of authority which will swallow up all or nearly 
all of the rights of the States with respect to the property, the 
liberties, and the lives of its citizens." 

He added, near the close of his address : " I am not to be un- 
derstood as denying the power of this Government, especially that 
great war power which, when evoked, has no limit except as it is 
limited by necessity and the laws of civilized warfare. But, sir, 
in time of peace I would not and I can not stand here and attempt 
the exercise of powers by this General Government, which, if car- 
ried out with all the logical consequences that follow their assump- 
tion, will, in my opinion, endanger the liberties of the country." 

Mr. Kerr, of Indiana, maintained the theory that the States 
should settle questions of citizenship as relating to those within 
their borders ; that "the privileges and immunities of citizenship 
in the States are required to be attained, if at all, according to the 
laws or Constitutions of the States, and never in defiance of them." 
To sustain this theory, he read from a number of authorities, and 
finally remarked : 

" This bill rests upon a theory utterly inconsistent with, and in 
direct hostility to, every one of these authorities. It asserts the 
right of Congress to regulate the laws which shall govern in the 
acquisition and ownership of property in the States, and to deter- 
mine who may go there and purchase and hold property, and to 
protect such persons in the enjoyment of it. The right of the 
State to regulate its own internal and domestic affairs, to select its 
own local policy, and make and administer its own laws, for the 
protection and welfare of its own citizens, is denied. If Congress 
can declare what rights and privileges shall be enjoyed in the 
States- by the people of one class, it can, by the same kind of rea- 
soning, determine what shall be enjoyed by every class. If it can 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 237 

say who may go into and settle in and acquire property in a State, 
it can also say who .shall not. If it can determine who may tes- 
tify and sue in the courts of a State, it may equally determine who 
shall not. If it can order the transfer of suits from the State to the 
Federal courts, where citizens of the same State alone are parties, 
in such cases as may arise under this bill, it can, by parity of logic, 
dispense with State courts entirely. Congress, in short, may erect 
a great centralized, consolidated despotism in this capital. And 
such is the rapid tendency of such legislation as this bill proposes." 

On the succeeding day, March 9th, Mr. Wilson having de- 
manded the previous question, on the motion to recommit, was 
entitled to the floor, but yielded portions of his time to Mr. 
Bingham and Mr. Shellabarger." 

The former had moved to amend the motion to recommit, by 
adding instructions " to strike out of the first section the words, 
*and there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immuni- 
ties among citizens of the United States, in any State or Terri- 
tory of the United States, on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of slavery,' and insert in the thirteenth line of the first 
section, after the word ' right,' the words, ' in every State and 
Territory of the United States.' Also, to strike out all parts of 
snid bill which are penal, and which authorize criminal proceed- 
ings, and in lieu thereof to give to all citizens injured by denial 
or violation of any of the other rights secured or protected by said 
act, an action in the United States courts with double costs in all 
cases of recovery, without regard to the amount of damages ; and 
also to secure to such persons the privilege of the writ of habeas 
corpus." 

Mr. Bingham said : " And, first, I beg gentlemen to consider 
that I do not oppose any legislation which is authorized by the 
Constitution of my country to enforce in its letter and its spirit 
the bill of rights as embodied in that Constitution. I know that 
the enforcement of the bill of rights is the want of the republic. 
I know if it had been enforced in good faith in every State of the 
Union, the calamities, and conflicts, and crimes, and sacrifices of 
the past five years would have been impossible. 

"But I feel that I am justified in saying, in view of the text 
of the Constitution of my countryj in view of all its past inter- 
pretations, in view of the maaifest and declared intent of the men 
who framed it, the enforcement of the Bill of Rights, touching the 



238 THE THIRTY-JflJ^TH COJVGHESS. 

life, liberty, and property of every citizen of the republic, within 
every organized State of the Union, is of the reserved powers of 
the States, to be enforced by State tribunals and by State officials, 
acting under the solemn obligations of an oath imposed upon them 
by the Constitution of the United States. Who can doubt this 
conclusion who considers the words of the Constitution, ' the pow- 
ers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respect- 
ively, or to the people?' The Constitution does not delegate to 
the United States the power to punish offenses against the life, 
liberty, or property of the citizen in the States, nor does it pro- 
hibit that power to the States, but leaves it as the reserved power 
of the States, to be by them exercised. The jjrohibitions of power 
by the Constitution to the States are express prohibitions, as that 
no State shall enter into any treaty, etc., or emit bills of credit, 
or pass any bill of attainder, etc. The Constitution does not 
prohibit States from the enactment of laws for the general gov- 
ernment of the j)eople within their respective limits. 

"The law in every State should be just; it should be no re- 
specter of persons. It is otherwise now, and it has been other- 
wise for many years in many of the States of the Union. I 
should remedy that, not by arbitrary assumption of power, but 
by amending the Constitution of the United States, expressly 
prohibiting the States from any such abuse of power in the fu- 
ture. You propose to make it a penal offense for the judges of 
the States to obey the Constitution and laws of their States, and 
for their obedience thereto to punish them by fine and imprison- 
ment as felons. I deny your power to do this. You can not 
make an official act, done under color of law, and without crim- 
inal intent, and from a sense of public duty, a crime." 

Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio said : " I do not understand that there 
is now any serious doubt anywhere as to our power to admit by 
law to the rights of American citizenship entire classes or races 
who were born and continue to reside in our territory or in ter- 
ritory we acquire. I stated, the other day, some of the cases in 
which we naturalized races, tribes, and communities in mass, and 
by single exercises of national sovereignty. This we did by the 
treaty of April 30, 1800, by which we acquired Louisiana; also 
in the treaty of 1819, by wliich we«acquircd Florida; also in the 
treaty of 1848, by which we acquired part of Mexico; also by 








^^^;^z^ 



JAMES F ^^ATILSON 
bkpkesi:ntai'Ive from ic-^'a 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 239 

the resolution of March 1, 1845, annexing Texas, and the act 
of December 29, same year, admitting Texas into the Union, we 
made all the people not slaves citizens ; also by the treaty of Sep- 
tember 27, 1830, we admitted to citizens certain heads of families 
of Choctaws; also by the treaty of December 29, 1855, we did 
the same as to the Cherokees; also by the act of March 3, 1843, 
we admitted to full citizenship the Stockbridge tribe of Indians." 
Referring to the first section which his colleague had proposed to 
amend, he said: " Self-evidently this is the whole effect of this 
first section. It secures, not to all citizens, but to all races as 
races who are citizens, equality of protection in those enumerated 
civil rights wliicli the States may deem proper to confer upon any 
races. Now, sir, can this Government do this? Can it prevent 
one race of free citizens from being by State laws deprived as a 
race of all the civil rights for the securement of which liis Gov- 
ernment was created, and which are the only considerations the 
Government renders to him for the Federal allegiance which he 
renders? It does seem to me that that Government which has 
the exclusive right to confer citizenship, and which is entitled to 
demand service and allegiance, which is supreme over that due 
to any State, may — nay, must — protect those citizens in those 
rights which are fairly conducive and appropriate and necessary 
to the attainment of his ' protection ' as a citizen. And I think 
those rights to contract, sue, testify, inherit, etc., which this bill 
says the races shall hold as races in equality, are of that class which 
are fairly conducive and necessary as means to the constitutional 
end ; to-wit, the protection of the rights of person and property 
of a citizen. It has been found impossible to settle or define what 
are all the indispensable rights of American citizenship. But it 
is perfectly well settled what are some of these, and without which 
there is no citizenship, either in this or any other Government. 
Two of these are the right of petition and the right of protection 
in such property as it is lawful for that particular citizen to own." 
The debate was closed by Mr. Wilson, Chairman of the Judi- 
ciary Committee. He said : " This bill, sir, has met with oppo- 
sition in both houses on the same ground that, in times gone by, 
before this land was drenched in blood by the slaveholders' rebell- 
ion, was urged by those who controlled the destinies of the south- 
ern portion of the country, and those who adhered to their fortunes 
in the North, for the purpose of riveting the chains of slavery and 



240 THE THIBTY-MIKTH COJfGBESS. 

converting this re^niblic into a great slave nation. The ar^u- 
ments ^vliich have been urged against this bill in both houses 
are but counterparts of the arguments used in opposition to the 
authority the Government sought to exercise in controlling and 
preventing the spread of slavery. 

" Citizens of the United States, as such, are entitled to certain 
rights, and, being entitled to those rights, it is the duty of the 
Government to j)rotect citizens in the perfect enjoyment of them. 
The citizen is entitled to life, liberty, and the right to property. 
The gentleman from Ohio tells us, in the jorotectiou of these 
rights, the citizen must depend upon the ' honest f>urpose of the 
several States,' and that the General Government can not inter- 
pose its strong right arm to defend the citizen in the enjoyment 
of life, liberty, and in possession of property. In other words, 
if the States of this Union, in their ^honest purpose,' like the 
honesty of purpose manifested by the Southern States in times 
past, should deprive the citizen, without due process of law, of 
life, liberty, and property, the General Government, which can 
draw the citizen by the strong bond of allegiance to the battle- 
field, has no power to intervene and set aside a State law, and 
give the citizen protection under the laws of Congress in the 
courts of the United States; that at the mercy of the States lie 
all the rights of the citizens of the United States ; that while it 
was deemed necessary to constitute a great Government to render 
secure the rights of the p6oj)le, the framers of the Government 
turned over to the States the power to deprive the citizen of those 
things for the security of which the Government was framed. In 
other words, the little State of Delaware has a hand stronger than 
the United States; that revolted South Carolina may put under 
lock and key the great fundamental rights belonging to the citi- 
zen, and we must be dumb; that our legislative power can not 
be exercised ; that our courts must be closed to the appeal of our ' 
citizens. That is the doctrine this House of Representatives, rep- 
resenting a great free people, just emerged from a terrible war for 
the maintenance of American liberty, is asked to adopt. 

"The gentleman from Ohio tells the House that civil rights 
involve all the rights that citizens have under the Government; 
that in the term are embraced those rights which belong to the 
citizen of the United States as such, and those which belong to 
a citizen of a State as such ; and that this bill is not intended 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 24I 

merely to enforce equality of rights, so far as they relate to citi- 
zens of the United States, but invades the States to enforce equality 
of rights in respect to those things which properly and rightfully 
depend on State regulations and laws. My friend is too sound a 
lawyer, is too well versed in the Constitution of his country, to 
indorse that proposition on calm and deliberate consideration. He 
knows, as every man knows, that this bill refers to those rights 
wliich belong to men as citizens of the United States and none 
other; and when he talks of setting aside the school laws, and 
jury laws, and franchise laws of the States, by the bill now under 
consideration, he steps beyond what he must know to be the rule 
of construction which must apply here, and, as the result of 
which this bill can only relate to matters within the control of 
Congress." 

Comparing Mr. Bingham's proposed amendment with the orig- 
inal bill, Mr. Wilson said : " What difference in principle is there 
between saying that the citizen shall be protected by the legisla- 
tive power of the United States in his rights by civil remedy and 
declaring that he shall be protected by penal enactments against 
those who interfere wdth his rights? There ls no diiference in 
the principle involved. If we may adopt the gentleman's mode, 
we may also select the mode provided in this bill. There is a 
difference in regard to the expense of protection ; there is also a 
difference as to the effectiveness of the two modes. Beyond this, 
nothing. This bill proposes that the humblest citizen shall have 
full and ample protection at the cost of the Government, whose 
duty it is to protect him. The amendment of the gentleman 
recognizes the principle involved, but it says that the citizen de- 
spoiled of his rights, instead of being properly protected by the 
Government, must press his own way through the courts and pay 
the bills attendant thereon. This may do for the rich, but to the 
poor, who need protection, it is mockery.* The highest obligation 
which the Government owes to the citizen, in return for the alle- 
giance exacted of him, is to secure him in the protection of his 
rights. Under the amendment of the gentleman, the citizen can 
only receive' that protection in the form of a few dollars in the 
way of damages, if he shall be so fortunate as to recover a ver- 
dict against a solvent wrong-doer. This is called protection. 
This is what we are asked to do in the way of enforcing the bill 
of rights. Dollars are weighed against the right of life, liberty, 
16 



24^ THE THIRTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

and property. The verdict of a jury is to cover all wrongs and 
discharge the obligations of the Government to its citizens. 

"Sir, I can not see the justice of that doctrine. I assert that 
it is the duty of the Government of the United States to provide 
proper protection and to pay the costs attendant on it. We have 
gone out with the strong arm of the Government and drawn from 
their homes, all over this land, in obedience to the bond of alle- 
giance which the Government holds on the citizen, hundreds of 
thousands of men to the battle-field; and yet, while we may ex- 
ercise this extraordinary power, the gentleman claims that we can 
not extend the protecting hand of the Government to these men 
who have been battling for the life of the nation, but can only 
send them, at their own cost, to jm'ies for verdicts of a few dol- 
lars in compensation for the most flagrant wrong to their most 
sacred rights. Let those supj)ort that doctrine who will, I can 
not." 

At the conclusion of Mr. Wilson's speech, Mr. Eldridge, of 
Wisconsin, moved to lay the whole subject on the table. This 
motion was rejected — yeas, 32; nays, 118. 

The House then rejected Mr. Bingham's proposed amendment, 
and recommitted the bill to the Committee on the Judiciary. 

On the 13th of March the bill was reported back from the 
committee with some amendments, one of which was to strike 
out in section one the following words : 

"Without distinction of color, and there shall he no discrimination in 
civil rights, or immunities among citizens of the United States in any State 
or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of slavery." 

The words were omitted to satisfy some who feared that it 
might be held by the courts that the right of suffrage was con- 
ferred thereby. 

Another amendment j)roposed was the addition of a section to 
the bill, to- wit : 

^^ And be it further enacted, That upon all questions of law arising in any 
case under the provisions of this act, a final appeal may be taken to the 
Supreme Court of the United States." 

Other amendments proposed and adopted were chiefly of a 
verbal character. 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 243 

Tlic main question was finally taken, and the bill passed by 
the following vote: 

Yeas — Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, James M. Ashley, Baker, 
Baldwin, Banks, Baxter, Bcaman, Bidwell, Blaine, Blow, BoutwcU, Brom- 
well, Broomall, Buckland, Bandy, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook, 
Cullom, Darlin<;, Davis, Dawes, Delano, Doming, Dixon, Donnelly, Driggs, 
Dumont, Eliot, Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Abner C. 
Harding, Hart, Hayes, Higby, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Asahel W. Hubbard, 
Chester D. Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, Hulburd, James 
Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jcnckcs, Julian, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Kuykendall, 
Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, 
Marston, Marvin, McClurg, ]\rcllucr, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, 
Morris, Moulton, Myers, Newell, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Perham, Pike, Plants, 
Price, iUexander H. Rice, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabargcr, Sloan, 
Spalding, Starr, Stevens, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L.' Thomas, Trow- 
bridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Ward, Warner, Elihu B. 
Washburne, William B. AVashburn, Welker, Wentworth, Whaley, Williams, 
James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Woodbridge— IIL 

Nays — Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Bingham, Boyer, Brooks, CoiTroth, Daw- 
son, Denison, Glosbrenner, Goodyear, Gridcr, Aaron Harding, Harris, 
Hogan, Edwin N. Hubbell, Jones, Kerr, Latham, Le Blond, Marshall, Mc- 
Cullough, Nicholson, Phelps, Radford, Samuel J. Randall, Willam H. Ran- 
dall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosseau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, Smith, Taber, 
Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, and Winfield— 38. 

Not Voting — Messrs. Dclos R. Ashley, Barker, Benjamin, Brandegee, 
Chanler, Reader W. Clarke, Culver, Defrees, Ecklcy, Eggeston, Eldridge, 
Finck, Griswold, Hale, Henderson, Hotchkiss, James R. Hubbell, James M. 
Humphrey, Johnson, Kasson, Mclndoe, McKee, Niblack, Noell, Patterson, 
Pomeroy, Raymond, John H. Rice, Rollins, Stilwell, Strouse, Robert T. 
Van Horn, Henry D. Washburn, and Wright — 34. 

It is an illustration of the opinion which the minority enter- 
tained of the bill to the last, that after it had finally j^assed, and 
the previous question had been moved on the adoption of the 
title, Mr. Le Blond moved to amend the title of the bill by 
making it read, " A bill to abrogate the rights and break down 
the judicial system of the States." 

On the 15th of -March the amendments made by the House 
came before the Senate for adoption in that body. While these 
were under consideration by the Senate, Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, 
made twb motions to amend, which were rejected. He then 
moved to lay the bill on the table, and was proceeding to make 
a speech, when he was informed that his motion was not debat- 
able. He then withdrew his motion to lay on the table, aufl 



244 TEE TEIRTT-JflJfTH COJfGRESS. 

moved to postpone the bill until the first Monday of December 
following. Finding that the last amendment proposed by the 
House of Representatives was before the Senate^ and that his 
motion could not be entertained, he proceeded to make a speech 
on the question before the Senate. He asserted that "Congress 
has no authority or jurisdiction whatever" over the subject of 
legislation which the bill contains. He closed his remarks with 
the following words : " I therefore, on the grounds that I have 
stated, oppose this bill. I know that they weigh nothing with 
the dominant power here. What care I for that? "What care I 
for the manner in which my suggestions may be received by the 
majority ? Nothing — less than nothing, if possible. I am per- 
forming my duty according to my sense of that duty ; ■ and in 
despite of all opposition, of frowns or scoffs, or of any other op- 
position, come in what form it may, I will stand up to the last 
hour of my service in this chamber, and will, endeavor, as best I 
can, to perform my duty whatever may betide me." 

The amendments of the House were agreed to, and the Civil 
Rights Bill wanted only Executive approval to become a law 
of the land. 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL, U5 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL AND THE VETO. 

Doubts as to the President's Decision — Suspense ended — The Veto Mes- 
sage — Mr. Trumbull's Answer — Mr. Reverdt Johnson defends the 
IMessage— Rejoinder — Remarks of Mr. Yates — Mr. Cowan appeals to 
THE Country — Mr. Stewart shows how States may make the Law a 
Nullity — :Mr. Wade — Mr. McDougall on Persian Mythology — Mr. J. 
n. Lane defends the President — Mr. Wade — The President's ' Col- 
lar — Mr. Brown — Mr. Doolittle — Mr. Garrett Davis — Mr. Sauls- 
bury — Yeas and Nays in the Senate — Vote in the IIouse — The Civil 
Rights Bill becomes a Law. 

THE Civil Eights Bill having finally passed through Congress, 
on the 15th of March, by the concurrence of the Senate in 
the amendments of the House, was submitted to the Presi- 
dent for his approval. Much anxiety was felt throughout the 
country to know what would be the fate of the bill at the hands 
of the Executive. Some thought it incredible that a President of 
the United States would veto so plain a declaration of rights, es- 
sential to the very existence of a large class of inhabitants. 
Others were confident that Mr. Johnson's approval would not be 
given to a bill interfering, as they thought, so flagrantly with the 
rights of the States under the Constitution. 

All doubts were dispelled, on the 27th of March, by the ap- 
pearance of the President's Secretary on the floor of the Senate, 
who said, in formal phrase : " Mr. President, I am directed by the 
President of the United States to return to the Senate, in which 
house it originated, the bill entitled ' An act to protect all persons 
in the United States in their civil rights, and to furnish the means 
of their vindication,' with his objections thereto in writing." 

The Secretary of the Senate then read the message, which was 
heard with profound attention by the Senators, and a large assem- 
bly which thronged the galleries, drawn thither in anticipation 
of the President's veto message. 



246 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^''GRESS. 

^'To the Senate of the United States : 

" I regret that the bill Avhich has passed both houses of Congress, entitled 
' An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and 
furnish the means for their vindication,' contains provisions which I can 
not approve, consistently with my sense of duty to the whole people and my 
obligations to the Constitution of the United States. I am therefore con- 
strained to return it to the Senate, the house in which it originated, with 
my objections to its becoming a law. 

" By the first section of the bill, all persons born in the United States, and 
not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared 
to be citizens of the United States. This provision comprehends the Chi- 
nese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called 
Gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, 
negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood. Every individual of those 
races, born in the United States, is by the biU made a citizen of the United 
States. It does not purport to declare or confer any other right of citizen- 
ship than Federal citizenship. It does not purport to give these classes of 
persons any status as citizens of States, except that which may result from 
their status as citizens of the United States. The power to confer the right 
of State citizenship is just as exclusively with the several States as the 
power to confer the right of Federal citizenship is with Congress. 

"The right of Federal citizenship thus to be conferred on the several ex- 
cepted races before mentioned is now, for the first time, proposed to be 
given by law. If, as is claimed by many, all persons who are native-born, 
already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the 
passage of the pending bill can not be necessary to make them such. If, 
on the other hand, such persons are not citizens, as may be assumed from 
the proposed legislation to make them such, the grave question jjresents it- 
self, whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in Con- 
gress, at this time it is sound policy to make our entire colored population 
and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States? Four millions 
of them have just emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably 
supposed that they possess the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all 
the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States? Have the 
people of the several States expressed such a conviction? It may also be 
asked whether it is necessary that they should be declared citizens in order 
that they may be secured in the enjoyment of civil rights ? Those rights 
proposed to be conferred by the bill are, by Federal as well as by State 
laws, secured to all domiciled aliens and foreigners even before the comple- 
tion of the process of naturalization, and it may safely be assumed that the 
same enactments are sufficient to give like protection and benefits to those 
for whom this bill provides special legislation. Besides, the policy, of the 
Government, from its origin to the present time, seems to have been that 
persons who are strangers to and unfamiliar with our institutions and our 
laws' should pass through a certain probation, at the end of which, before 
attaining the coveted prize, they must give evidence of their fitness to re- 
ceive and to exercise the rights of citizens as contemplated by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 247 

"The bill, in effect, proposes a discrimination against large numbers of 
intelligent, -worthy, and patriotic foreigners, and in flivor of the negro, to 
whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence 
have now been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity, from his previous 
unfortunate condition of servitude, be less informed as to the nature and 
character of our institutions than he who, coming from abroad, has to some 
extent at least, familiarized himself with the principles of a Government 
to which he voluntarily intrusts 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' 
Yet it is now proposed by a single legislative enactment to confer the rights 
of citizens upon all persons of African descent, born within the extended 
limits of the United States, while persons of foreign birth, who make our 
land their home, must undergo a probation of five years, and can only then 
become citizens upon proof that they arc of 'good moral character, attached 
to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed 
to the good order and happiness of the same.' 

"The first section of the bill also contains an enumeration of the rights 
to be enjoyed by these classes, so made citizens, 'in every State and Terri- 
tory in the United States.' These rights are, ' To make and enforce con- 
tracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, 
hold, and convey real and personal property,' and to have ' full and equal 
benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property 
as is enjoyed by white citizens.' So, too, they are made subject to the same 
punishment, pains, and penalties in common with white citizens, and to 
none others. Thus a perfect equality of the white and black races is at- 
tempted to be fixed by Federal law, in every State of the Union, over the 
vast field of State jurisdiction covered by these enumerated rights. In no 
one of these can any State ever exercise any power of discrimination be- 
tween the different races. 

"In the exercise of State policy over matters exclusively affecting the peo- 
ple of each State, it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate 
between the two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Xorthern as 
well as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall in- 
termarry with a negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of the 
blacks, that ' marriages between them and whites are forbidden in some of 
the States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the 
slaveholding States, and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are re- 
volting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.' 

"I do not say this bill repeals State laws on the subject of marriage be- 
tween the two racQS, for as the whites are forbidden to intermarry with the 
blacks,' the blacks can only make such contracts as the whites themselves 
are allowed to make, and therefore can not, under this bill, enter into the 
marriage contract with the whites. I cite this discrimination, however, as 
an instance of the State policy as to discrimination, and to inquire whether, 
if Congress can abrogate all State laws of discrimination between the two 
races in the matter of real estate, of suits, and of contracts generally, Con- 
gress may not also repeal the State laws as t#the contract of marriage be- 
tween the two races? Hitherto every subject embraced in the enumeration 
of rif'hts contained in this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging 



248 THE THIRTY-JriJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

to the States. They all relate to the internal policy and economy of the re- 
spective States. They are matters which in each State concern the domestic 
condition of its people, varying in each according to its own peculiar circum- 
stances, and the safety and well-being of its own citizens. I do not mean 
to say that upon all these subjects there are not Federal restraints, as, for 
instance, in the State power of legislation over contracts, there is a Federal 
limitation that^ no State shall pass a law impairing the obligations of con- 
tracts; and as to crimes, that no State shall pass an ex post facto law; and 
as to money, that no State shall make any thing but gold and silver a legal 
tender. But where can we find a Federal prohibition against the power of 
any State to discriminate, as do most of them, between aliens and citizens, 
between artificial persons called corporations and natural persons, in the 
right to hold real estate? 

"If it be granted that Congress can repeal all State laws discriminating 
between whites and blacks, in the subjects covered by this bill, why, it may 
be asked, may not Gongress repeal in the same way all State laAvs discrim- 
inating between the two races on the subject of suffrage and oflEice? If 
Congress can declare by law who shall hold lands, who shall testify, who 
shall have capacity to make a contract in a State, then Congress can by law 
also declare who, without regard to color or race, shall have the right to 
sit as a juror or as a judge, to hold any ofiice, and, finally, to vote, 'in every 
State and Territory of the United States.' As respects the Territories, they 
come within the power of Congress, for, as to them, the law-making power 
is the Federal power; but as to the States, no similar provisions exist, vest- 
ing in Congress the power 'to make rules and regulations' for them. 

"The object of the second section of the bill is to afford discriminating 
protection to colored persons in the full enjoyment of all the rights secured 
to them by the preceding section. It declares ' that any person who, under 
color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or 
cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the de- 
privation of any right secured or protected by this act, or to different pun- 
ishment, pains, or penalties on account of such person having at one time 
been held in a condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a 
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or 
by reason of his color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of 
white persons, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, 
shall be punished by. fine not exceeding $1,000, or by imprisonment not 
exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court.' This section 
seems to be designed to apply to some existing or future law of a State or 
Territory which may conflict with the provisions of the bill now under con- 
sideration. It provides for counteracting such forbidden legislation by im- 
posing fine and imprisonment upon the legislators who may pass such 
conflicting laws, or upon the ofiicers or agents who shall put, or attempt to 
put, them into execution. It means an official offense, not a common crime 
committed against law upon the persons or property of the black race. 
Such an act may deprive tll^ black man of his property, but not of the 
right to, hold property. It means a deprivation of the right itself, either by 
the State Judiciary or the State Legislature. It is therefore assumed that, 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 24O 

under this section, members of State Legislatures who should vote for laws 
conflicting with the provisions of the bill; that judges of the State courts 
who should render judgments in antagonism with its terms; and that mar- 
shals and sheritTs, who should, as ministerial officers, execute processes, 
sanctioned by State laws and issued by State judges, in execution of their 
judgments, could be brought before other tribunals, and there suljected to 
fine and imprisonment for the performance of the duties which such State 
laws might impose. 

"The legislation thus proposed invades the judicial power of the State. 
It says to every State coiirt or judge. If you decide that this act is uncon- 
stitutional; if you refuse, under the prohibition of a State law, to allow a 
negro to testify; if you hold that over such a subject-matter the State law 
is paramount, and 'under color' of a State law refuse the exercise of the 
right to the negro, your error of judgment, however conscientious, shall sub- 
ject you to fine and imprisonment I do not apprehend that the conflicting 
legislation which the bill seems to contemplate is so likely to occur as to 
render it necessary at this time to adopt a measure of such doubtful consti- 
tutionalit}'. 

"In the next place, this provision of the bill seems to be unnecessary, as 
adequate judicial remedies could be adopted to secure the desired end 
without invading the immunities of legislators, always important to be pre- 
served in the interest of public liberty; without assailing the independence 
of the judiciary, always essential to the preservation of individual rights ; 
and without impairing the efficiency of ministerial officers, always necessary 
for the maintenance of public peace and order. The remedy proposed by 
this section seems to be, in this respect, not only anomalous, but unconsti- 
tutional; for the Constitution guarantees nothing with certainty, if it does 
not insure to the several States the right of making and executing laws in 
regard to all matters arising within their jurisdiction, subject only to the 
restriction that, in cases of conflict with the Constitution and constitutional 
laws of the United States, the latter should be held to be the supreme law 
of the land. 

"The third section gives the district courts of the United States exclusive 
'cognizance of all crimes and oS'enses committed against the provisions of 
this act,' and concurrent jurisdiction with the circuit courts of the United 
States of all civil and criminal cases 'afl"ecting persons who are denied or 
can not enforce in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State or locality 
where they may be any of the rights secured to them by the first section.' 
The construction which I have given to the second section is strengthened 
by this third section, for it makes clear what kind of denial or deprivation 
of the rights secured by the first section was in contemplation. It is a de- 
nial or deprivation of such rights 'in the courts or judicial tribunals of the 
State.' It stands, therefore, clear of doubt, that the offense and the penal- 
ties provided in the second section are intended for the State judge, who, in 
the clear exercise of his function as a judge, not acting ministerially, but 
judicially, shall decide contrary to this Federal law. In other words, when 
a State judge, acting upon a question involving a conflict between a State 
law and a Federal law, and bound, according to his own judgment and re- 



^50 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

sponsibUity, to give an impartial decision between the two, comes to the 
conclusion that the State law is valid and the Federal law is invalid, he 
must not follow the dictates of his own judgment, at the peril of fine and 
imprisonment. The legislative department of the Government of the United 
States thus takes from the judicial department of the States the sacred and 
exclusive duty of judicial decision, and converts the State judge into a mere 
ministerial officer, bound to decree according to the will of Congress. 

"It is clear that, in States which deny to persons whose rights are se- 
cured by the first section of the bill any one of those rights, all criminal 
and civil cases affecting them will, by the provisions of the third section, 
come under the exclusive cognizance of the Federal tribunals. It follows 
that if, in any State which denies to a colored person any one of all those 
rights, that person should commit a crime against the laws of the State — 
murder, arson, rape, or any other crime — all protection and punishment 
through the courts of the State are taken away, and he can only bo tried 
and punished in the Federal courts. How is the criminal to be tried? If 
the oifense is provided for and punished by Federal law, that law, and not 
the State law, is to govern. 

"It is only when the offense does not happen to be within the purview 
of the Federal law that the Federal courts are to try and punish him under 
any other law; then resort is to be had to 'the common law, as modified 
and changed ' by State legislation, ' so far as the same is not inconsistent 
with the Constitution and laws of the United States.' So that over this vast 
domain of criminal jurisprudence, provided by each State for the protection 
of its own citizens, and for the punishment of all persons who violate its 
criminal laws. Federal law, wherever it can be made to apply, displaces 
State law. 

" The question here naturally arises, from what source Congress derives 
the power to transfer to Federal tribunals certain classes of cases embraced 
in this section. The Constitution expressly declares that the judicial power 
of the United States ' shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under 
this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which 
shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting embassadors, 
other public ministers, and consuls ; to all cases of admiralty and maritime 
jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; 
to controversies between two or more States, between a State and citizens 
of another State, between citizens of different States, between citizens of 
the same State claiming land under grants of different States, and between 
a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens, or subjects.' 

"Here the judicial power of the United States is expressly set forth and 
defined; and the act of September 24, 1789, establishing the judicial couri;^ 
of the United States, in conferring upon the Federal courts jurisdiction over 
cases originating in State tribunals, is careful to confine them to the classes 
enumerated in the above recited clause of the Constitution. This section 
of the bill undoubtedly comprehends case, and authorizes the exercise of 
powers that are not, by the Constitution, within the jurisdiction' of the courts 
of the United States. To transfer them to those courts would be an exer- 
cise of authority well calculated to excite distrust and alarm on the part of 



CIVIL EIGHTS BILL. 251 

all the States ; for the bill applies alike to all of them— as well to those that 
have as to those that have not been engaged in rebellion. 

"It may.be assumed that this authority is incident to the power granted 
to Congress by the Constitution, as recently amended, to enforce, by appro- 
priate legislation, the article declaring that ' neither slavery nor involuntary 
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place sub- 
ject to their jurisdiction.' It can not, however, be justly claimed that, with 
a view to the enforcement of this article of the Constitution, there is, at 
present, any necessity for the exercise of all the powers which this bill 
confers. 

Slavery has been abolished, and, at present, nowhere exists within the 
jurisdiction of the United States; nor has there been, nor is it likely there 
will be, any attempt to revive it by the people of the States. If, however, 
any such attempt shall be made, it will then become the duty of the Gen- 
eral Government to exercise any and all incidental powers necessary and 
proper to maintain inviolate this great constitutional law of freedom. 

" The fourth section of the bill provides that ofiicers and agents of the 
Frcedmen's Bureau shall be empowered to make arrests, and also that other 
officers may be specially commissioned for that purpose by the President of 
the United States. It also authorizes circuit courts of the United States and 
the superior courts of the Territories to appoint, without limitation, commis- 
sioners, who are to be charged with the performance of quasi judicial duties. 
The fifth section empowers the commissioners so to be selected by the courts 
to appoint, in vsriting, under their hands, one or more suitable persons, from 
time to time, to execute warrants and other processes described by the bill. 
These numerous official agents are made to constitute a sort of police, in 
•addition to the military, and are authorized to summon a posse comitatus 
and even to caU to their aid such portion of the land and naval forces of 
the United States, or of the militia, ' as may be necessary to the perform- 
ance of the duty with which they are charged.' 

"This extraordinary power is to be conferred upon agents irresponsible 
to the Government and to the people, to whose number the discretion of the 
commissioners is the only limit, and in whose hands such authority might 
be made a terrible engine of wrong, oppression, and -fraud. The general 
statutes regulating the land and naval forces of the United States, the mi- 
litia, and the execution of the laws, are believed to be adequate for every 
emergency which can occur in time of peace. If it should prove otherwise. 
Congress can, at any time, amend those laws in such manner as, while sub- 
serving the public welfare, not to jeopard the rights, interests, and liberties 
of the people. , 

"The seventh section provides that a fee of ten dollars shall be paid to 
each commissioner in every case brought before him, and a fee of five dol- 
lars to his deputy, or deputies, ' for each person he or they may arrest and 
take before any such commissioner,' ' with such other fees as may be deemed 
reasonable by such commissioner,' ' in general for performing such other du- 
ties as may be required in the premises.' All these fees are to be 'paid out 
of the Treasury of the United States,' whether there is a conviction or not ; 



252 TEE THIBTT-J^IJfTH COJ{GRESS. 

but, in case of conviction, they are to be recoverable from the defendant. 
It seems to me that, under the influence of such temptations, bad men mifht 
convert any law, however beneficent, into an instrument of persecution and 
fraud. 

"]}y the eighth section of the bill, the United States courts, which sit only 
in one place for white citizens, must migrate, with the marshal and district 
attorney (and necessarily with the clerk, although he is not mentioned), to 
any part of the district, upon the order of the President, and there hold a 
court ' for the purpose of the more speedy arrest and trial of persons charged 
with a violation of this act;' and there the judge and the officers of the 
court must remain, upon the order of the President, 'for the time therein 
designated.' 

"The ninth section authorizes the President, or such person as he may 
empower for that purpose, to employ such part of the land and naval forces 
of the United States, or of the militia, as shall be necessary to prevent the 
violation and enforce the due execution of this act.' This language seems 
to imply a permanent military force, that is to be always at hand, and 
whose only business is to be the enforcement of this measure over the vast 
region where it is intended to operate. 

"I do not propose to consider the policy of this bill. To me the details 
of the bill seem fraught with evil. The white race and the black race of 
the South have hitherto lived together under the relation of master and slave 
— capital owning labor. Now, suddenly, that relation is changed, and, as to 
the ownership, capital and labor are divorced. They stand, now, each 
master of itself In this new relation, one being necessary to the other, 
there will be a new adjustment, which both are deeply interested in making 
harmonious. Each has equal power in settling the terms, and, if left to the 
laws that regulate capital and labor, it is confidently believed that they will 
satisfactorily work out the problem. Capital, it is true, ha^ more intelli- 
gence; but labor is never so ignorant as not to understand its own interests, 
not to know its own value, and not to see that capital must pay that value. 
This bill frustrates this adjustment. It intervenes between capital and 
labor, and attempts to settle questions of political economy through the 
agency of numerous officials, whose interest it will be to foment discord 
between the two races; for, as the breach widens, their employment will 
continue, and when it is closed, their occupation will terminate. 

"In all our history, in all our experience as a people living under Fed- 
eral and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of 
this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted. They establish, for the 
security of the colored race, safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that 
the General Government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the 
distinction of race and color is, by the bill, made to operate in favor of the 
colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal leg- 
islation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State 
and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State — an absorption 
and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced 
in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers, and break 
down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. It is another 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. Q53 

step, or rather stride, to centralization and the concentration of all legisla- 
tive power in the National Government. The tendency of the bill must be 
to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion, and to arrest the progress of those influ- 
ences which are more closely drawing around the States the bonds of union 
and peace. 

"My lamented predecessor, in his proclamation of the 1st of January, 
1863, ordered and declared that all persons held as slaves within certain 
States and parts of States therein designated, were and thenceforward should 
be free; and, further, that the Executive Government of the United States, 
including the military and naval authorities thereof, would recognize and 
maintain the freedom of such persons. This guarantee has been rendered 
especially obligatory and sacred by the amendment of the Constitution abol- 
ishing slavery throughout the United States. I, therefore, fully recognize 
the obligation to protect and defend that class of our people whenever and 
wherever it shall become necessary, and to the full extent compatible with 
the Constitution of the United States. 

"Entertaining these sentiments, it only remains for me to say that I will 
cheerfully cooperate with Congress in any Jaeasure that may be necessary 
for the protection of the civil rights of the freedmen, as well as those of 
all other classes of persons throughout the United States, by judicial pro- 
cess under equal and impartial laws, in conformity with the provisions of 
the Federal C institution. 

"I now return the bill to the Senate, and regret that, in considering the 
bills and joint resolutions — forty-two in number — which have been thus far 
submitted for my approval, I am compelled to withhold my assent from a 
second measure that has received the sanction of both houses of Congress. 

"ANDREW JOHNSON. 
"Washington, D. C, March 27, 186G." 

The death and funeral obsequies of Senator Foot prevented 
the Senate from proceeding to the consideration of the Presi- 
dent's veto message for more than a week after it was read. On 
the 4th of April the Civil Rights Bill came up to be recon- 
sidered, the question being, " Shall the bill pass, the objections of 
the President notwithstanding." 

It devolved upon Mr. Trumbull, the author of the bill, to 
answer the objections of the President. In answer to the Presi- 
dent's position that the bill conferred only Federal citizenship, 
and did not give any status as citizens of States, Mr. Trumbull 
said : " Is it true that when a person becomes a citizen of the 
United States he is not also a citizen of every State where he 
may happen to be? On this point I will refer to a decision 
pronounced by the Supreme Court of the United States, de- 
livered by Chief-Justice Marshall, the most eminent jurist who 
ever sat upon an American bench. In the case of Gassies vs. 



254 THE THIETY-J^IJ^'TR COJ^GRESS. 

Ballon, reported in 6 Peters, the Chief-Justice, in delivering the 
opinion of the court, says : 

'"The defendant in error is alleged in the proceedings to be a citizen of 
the United Stated States, naturalized in Louisiana, and residing there. This 
is equivalent to an averment that he is a citizen of that State. A citizen of 
the United States residing in any State of the Union is a citizen of that State.' " 

The message declared " that the right of Federal citizenship is 
now for the first time proposed to be given by law." " This," 
said Mr. Trumbull, " is not a misapprehension of the law, but a 
mistake in fact, as will appear by references to which I shall 
call the attention of the Senate." Mr. Trumbull then referred 
to the " collective naturalization " of citizens of Louisiana, 
Texas, and Cherokees, Choctaw, and Stockbridge Indians. 

To the remark in the message that " if, as many claim, native- 
born persons are already citizens of the United States, this bill 
can not be necessary to make them such," Mr. Trumbull replied : 
"An act declaring what the law is, is one of' the most common 
of acts known by legislative bodies. When there is any question 
as to what the law is, and for greater certainty, it is the most 
common thing in the world to pass a statute declaring it." 

To the objection that eleven States were unrepresented, the 
Senator replied : " This is a standing objection in all the veto 
messages, yet the President has signed some forty bills. If there 
is any thing in this objection, no bill can pass Congress till the 
States are represented here. Sir, whose fault is it that eleven 
States are not represented? By what fault of theirs is it that 
twenty-five loyal States which have stood by this Union and by 
the Constitution are to be deprived of their right to legislate? 
If the reason assigned is a good one now, it has been a good one 
all the time for the last five years. If the fact that some States 
have rebelled against the Government is to take from the Gov- 
ernment the right to legislate, then the criminal is to take ad- 
vantage of his crime; the innocent are to be punished for the 
guilty. 

" But the President tells us that ^ the bill, in effect, proposes a 
discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and 
patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the negro.'. Is that true? 
^yllat is the bill? It declares that there shall be no distinction 
in civil rights between any other race or color and the white race 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. ^55 

It declares that there shall be no different punishment inflicted 
on a colored man in consequence of his color than that which is 
inflicted on a white man for the same offense. Is that a dis- 
crimination in favor of the negro and against the foreigner — a 
bill the only effect of which is to preserve equality of rights ? 

"But pcrliaps it may be replied to this that the bill proposes 
to make a citizen of every person born in the United States, and, 
therefore, it discriminates in that respect against the foreigner. 
Not so; foreigners are all upon the same footing, whether black 
or white. The white child who is born in the United States a 
citizen is not to be presumed at its birth to be the equal in- 
tellectually with the worthy, intelligent, and patriotic foreigner 
who emigrates to this country. And, as is suggested by a 
Senator behind me, even the infant child of a foreigner born 
in this land is a citizen of the United States long before his 
father. Is this, therefore, a discrimination against foreigners? 

"The President also has an objection to the making citizens of 
Chinese and Gypsies. I am told that but few Chinese are born 
in this country, and where the Gypsies are born, I never knew. 
[Laughter.] Like Toj)sy, it is questionable, whether they were 
born at all, but 'just come.' [Laughter.] 

" But, sir, perhaps the best answer to this objection that the bill 
proposes to make citizens of Chinese and Gypsies, and this refer- 
ence to the foreigners-, is to be found in a speech delivered in this 
body by a Senator occupying, I think, the seat now occupied 
across the chamber by my friend from Oregon, [Mr. AVilliams,] 
less than six years ago, in reply to a message sent to this body by 
Mr. Buchanan, the then President of the United States, return- 
ing, with his objections, what was known as the Homestead Bill. 
On that occasion the Senator to whom I allude said : . 

" 'But this idea about "poor foreigners," somehow or other, bewilders and 
haunts the imagination of a great many. ***** 

" 'I am constrained to say that I look upon this objection to the bill as a 
mere quibble on the part of the President, and as being hard-pressed for 
some excuse in withholding his approval of the measure; and his allusion 
to foreigners in this connection looks to me more like the ad capiandum of 
the mere politician or demagogue, than a grave and sound reason to be 
offered by the President of the United States in a v6to message upon so im- 
portant a measure as the Homstead Bill.' 

"That was the language of Senator Andrew Johnson, now 



256 THE THIBTT-JflJS'TH CONGRESS. 

President of the United States. [Laughter.] That is probably 
the best answer to this objection, though I should hardly have 
ventured to use such harsh language in reference to the President 
as to accuse him of quibbling and of demagoguery, and of play- 
in"- the mere politician in sending a veto message to the Congress 
of the United States." 

The President had urged an objection that if Congress could 
confer civil rights upon persons without regard to color or race, 
it might also confer upon them political rights, and among them 
that of suffrage. In ref)ly to this, Mr. Trumbull referred to the 
policy of the President himself in undertaking to "reorganize 
State governments in the disloyal States." He " claimed and 
exercised the power to protect colored persons in their civil 
rights," and yet, when " urged to allow loyal blacks to vote," he 
held that " he had no power ; it was unconstitutional." 

"But, sir," continued Mr. Trumbull, "the granting of civil 
rights does not and never did, in this country, carry with it rights, 
or, more properly speaking, political privileges. A man may be 
a citizen in this country without a right to vote or without a 
right to hold office. The right to vote and hold office in the 
States depends upon the legislation of the various States; the 
right to hold certain offices under the Federal Government de.- 
pends upon the Constitution of the United States. The Presi- 
dent must be a natural-born citizen, and a Senator or Representa- 
tive must be a citizen of the United States for a certain number 
of years before he is eligible to a seat either in this or the other 
House of Congress ; so that the fact of being a citizen does not 
necessarily qualify a person for an office, nor does it necessarily 
authorize him to vote. Women are citizens ; children are citizens ; 
but they do not exercise the elective franchise by virtue of their 
citizenship. Foreigners, as is stated by the President in this 
message, before they are naturalized are protected in the rights 
enumerated in this bill, but because they possess those rights in 
most, if not all, the States, that carries with it no right to vote. 

" But, sir, what rights do citizens of the United States have ? 
To be a citizen of the United States carries with it some rights, 
and what are they ? They are those inherent, fundamental rights 
which belong to free citizens or free men in all countries, such as 
the rights enumerated in this bill, and they belong to them in all 
the States of the Union. The right of American citizenship means 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 257 

something. It docs not mean, in the case of a foreigner, that when 
he is naturalized he is to be left entirely to the mercy of State 
legislation. He has a riglit, when duly naturalized, to go into any 
State of the Union, and to reside there, and the United States 
Government will protect him in that right. It will protect a 
citizen of the United States, not only in one of the States of the 
Union, but it will protect him in foreign lauds. 

" Every person residing in the United States is entitled to the 
protection of that law by the Federal Government, because the 
Federal Government has jurisdiction of such questions. Ameri- 
can citizenship would be little worth if it did not carry protection 
with it. 

" How is it that every person born in these United States owes 
allegiance to the Government? Every thing that he is or has, 
his property and his life, may be taken by the Government of the 
United States in its defense, or to maintain the honor of the nation. 
And can it be that our ancestors struggled through a long war and 
set up this Government, and that the people of our day have strug- 
gled through another war, with all its sacrifices and all its desola- 
tion, to maintain it, and at last that we have got a Government 
which is all-powerful to command the obedience of the citizen, 
.but has no power to afford him protection ? Is that all that this 
boasted American citizenship amounts to? Go tell it, sir, to the 
father whose son was starved at Andersonville ; or the widow 
whose husband was slain at INIission Ridge ; or the little boy who 
leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, made 
blind by the winds and the sand of the Southern coast ; or the 
thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side, that this 
Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the 
father lost his eyes, and the others were crippled, had the right to 
call these persons to its defense, but has no right to protect the 
survivors or their friends in any right Avhatever in any of the 
States. Sir, it can not be. Such is not the meaning of our Con- 
stitution. Such is not the meaning of American citizenship. This 
Government, which would go to war to protect its meanest — I will 
not say citizen — inhabitant, if you please, in any foreign land, 
whose rights were unjustly encroached upon, has certainly some 
power to protect its own citizens in their own country. Allegiance 
and protection are reciprocal rights." 

To the President's objection to the second section of the bill, 
17 



258 THE THIRTY-JflJfTH COJVGBESS. 

that it discriminated in favor of colored persons, Mr. Trumbull 
replied : " It says, in effect, that no one shall subject a colored 
person to a different punishment than that inflicted on a white 
person for the same offense. Does that discriminate in favor of 
the colored person ? Why, sir, the very object and effect of the 
section is to prevent discrimination, and language, it seems to me, 
could not more. plainly express that object and effect. It may be 
said that it is for the benefit of the black man, because he is now, 
in some instances, discriminated against by State laws ; but that 
is the case with all remedial statutes. They are for the relief of 
the persons who need the relief, not for the relief of those who have 
the right already ; and when those needing the relief obtain it, they 
stand upon the precise footing of those who do not need the benefit 
of the law." 

The President had further objected to this section, that " it pro- 
vides for counteracting such forbidden legislation by imposing fine 
and imprisonment upon the legislators who may pass such con- 
flicting laws." 

" Let us see," said Mr. Trumbull, " if that is the language or 
the projier construction of the section. I will read again the first 
lines of it. It declares ' that any person who, under color of any 
law, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to be 
subjected, etc., * * =i= shall be punished,' etc. 

" Who is to be punished ? Is the law to be punished ? Are 
the men who make the law to be punished ? Is that the lan- 
guage of the bill ? Not at all. If any person, ' under color of 
any law,' shall subject another to the deprivation of a right to 
which he is entitled, he is to be punished. Who ? The person 
who, under the color of the law, does the act, not the men who 
made the law. In some communities in the South a custom pre- 
vails by which different punishment is inflicted upon the blacks 
from that meted out to whites for the same offense. Does this 
section propose to punish the community where the custom pre- 
vails? or is it to punish the person who, under color of the 
custom, deprives the party of his right? It is a manifest per- 
version of the meaning of the section to assert any thing else. 

"But it is said that under this provision judges of the courts 
and ministerial officers who are engaged in execution of any such 
statutes may be punished, and that is made an objection to this 
bill. I admit that a ministerial oflScer or a judge, if he acts cor- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 259 

ruptly or viciously in the execution or under color of an illegal 
act, may be and ought to be punished ; but if he acted innocently, 
the judge -would not be punished. Sir, what is a crime? It is 
a violation of some public law, to constitute which there must be 
an act, and a vicious will in doing the act; or, according to the 
definition in some of the law-books, to constitute a crime there 
must be a violation of a public law, in the commission of which 
there must be a union or joint operation of act and intent, or 
criminal negligence; and a judge who acted innocently, and not 
viciously or oppressively, would never be convicted under this act. 
But, sir, if he acted knowingly, viciously, or oppressively, in dis- 
regard of a law of the United States, I repeat, he ought to be 
punished, and it is no anomaly to prescribe a punishment in such 
a case. Very soon after the organization of this Governm^it, in 
the first years of its existence, the Congress of the United States 
provided for punishing officers who, under color of State law, 
violated the laws of the United States." 

Mr. Trumbull then read from an act of Congress passed in 
1790, providing for the punishment of certain offenses against 
foreign ministers, and said : " By this provision all officers exe- 
cuting any process in violation of the laws of the United . States 
are to be subject to a much longer imprisonment than is provided 
by this bill. 

"But, sir, there is another answer, in my judgment, more con- 
clusive, to all these objections to this second section, which is the 
vital part of the bill. Without it, it would scarcely be worth the 
paper on which the bill is written. A law without a penalty, 
without a sanction, is of little value to any body. What good 
does it do for the Legislature to say, ' Do this, and forbear to do 
that,' if no consequence is to follow the act of disobedience? 
This is the vitality of the bill. What is the objection that is 
made to it, and which seems even to have staggered some friends 
of the measure? It is because it reads in the first section that 
any person who, ' under color of law,' shall commit these offenses, 
shall be subject to the jienalties of the law. Suppose those words 
had been left out, and the bill read, ' any person who shall subject 
any inhabitant of a State to different punishment by reason of his 
color shall be punished,' would there have been any objection to 
the bill then ? That is the way most criminal laws read. That 
is the way the law punishing conspiracies against the Government 



260 THE THIRTY-J^miE COjYGBESS. 

reads. If two or more persons conspire together to overthrow 
the Government; or by force to resist its authority, they are lia- 
ble to indictment, and, upon conviction, to imprisonment in the 
penitentiary and to hea\y fine. Would the fact that the persons 
engaged in the conspiracy were judges or governors or minister- 
ial officers, acting under color of any statute or custom, screen 
them from punishment? Surely not. 

"The words 'under color of law' were inserted as words of 
limitation, and not for the purpose of punishing persons who 
would not have been subject to punishment under the act if they 
had been omitted. If an offense is committed against a colored 
person simply because he is colored, in a State where the law 
affords him the same protection as if he were Avhite, this act 
neither has nor was intended to have any thing to do with his 
case, because he has adequate remedies in the State courts; but 
if he is discriminated against, under color of State law^s, because 
he is colored, then it becomes necessary to interfere for his pro- 
tection. 

"The assumption that State judges and other officials are not 
to be held responsible for violations of United States laws when 
done under color of State statutes or customs is akin to the 
maxim of the English law that the king can do no wrong. It 
places officials above the law ; it is the very doctrine out of which 
the rebellion was hatched. 

" Every thing that was done by that wicked effort to overturn 
our Government w^as done under color of law. The rebels in- 
sisted that they had a right to secede ; they passed ordinances of 
secession, they set up State governments, and all that they did 
was under color of law. And if parties committing these high 
crimes are to go free because they acted under color of law, why 
is not Jeff. Davis and every other rebel chief discharged at once? 
Why did this country put forth all its resources of men and 
money to put down the rebellion against the authority of the 
Government except it had a right to do so, even as against those 
who were acting under color of law ? Lee, with his rebel hordes, 
" thundering upon the outskirts of this very city, Avas acting un- 
der color of law; every judge who has held a court in the South- 
ern States for the last four years, and has tried and convicted of 
treason men guilty of no other offense than loyalty to the Union, 
acted under color of law. 



CIVIL EIGHTS BILL. 261 

" Sir, if wc had authority by the use of the army and the war 
power to put down rebels acting under color of law, I jjut the 
question to every laAvyer, if we had not authority to do that 
through the courts and the judicial tribunals if it had been prac- 
ticable? Suppose it had been practicable, through the marshals, 
to arrest the Legislature which convened at Montgomery, and 
undertook to take the State of Alabama out of the Union and 
set up a government in hostility thereto, ought it not to have 
been done? AVas not that a conspiracy against this Government? 
When the Legislature assembled at Montgomery in 1861, and 
resolved that the connection between Alabama and the United 
Stt^es was dissolved, and when its members took steps to main- 
tain that declaration; when the same thing was done in South 
Carolina, and courts were organized to carry out the scheme, will 
any body tell me it would not have been competent, had it been 
practicable, for the United States courts in those States to have 
issued process for the arrest of every one of those legislators, gov- 
ernors, judges, and all. And, sir, had this been done, and it had 
turned out upon trial that any of the parties arrested had been 
engaged in armed hostility against the United States, as some 
of them had been when, with arms in their hands, they seized 
the arsenals and other public projicrty of the United States, would 
they not have been found guilty of treason and hung for treason ? 
and would the fact that they had acted under color of law have 
afforded them any protection?" 

The President, in his Veto Message, had said, " I do not ap- 
prehend that the conflicting legislation which the bill seems to 
contemplate is so likely to occur as to render it necessary, at this 
time, to adopt a measure of such doubtful constitutionality." 

" That statement," replied Mr. Trumbull, " makes it necessary 
that I should advert to the facts and show w^hether there is any 
likelihood of such conflicting legislation ; and my testimony comes 
from the President himself, or those acting under his authority." 

After having referred to legislative enactments of several of 
the Southern States very oppressive to the colored people, Mr. 
Trumbull remarked : " Now, sir, what becomes of this declara- 
tion that there is no necessity for any measure of this kind? 
Here are the laws of Texas, of Mississippi, of Virginia, to 
which I have referred; and laws equally oppressive exist in 
some of the other States. Is there no necessity to protect a 



26^ THE THIBTY-KINTR CO K GUESS. 

frcedman when he is liable to be -whipped if caught away 
from home? no necessity to protect a freedman in his rights 
when he is not permitted to hold or lease a piece of ground in 
a State? no necessity to protect a frcedman in his rights, who 
will be reduced to a slavery worse than that from which he 
has been emancipated if a law is permitted to be carried into 
effect? Sir, these orders emanate and this information comes 
from officers acting by presidential authority, and yet the Pres- 
ident tells us there is no danger of conflicting legislation." 

After having answered other objections of the President, Mr. 
Trumbull said : " I have now gone through this Yeto Message, 
replying with what patience I could command to its various ob- 
jections to the bill. Would that I could stop here, that there 
was no occasion to go ftirther; but justice to myself, justice to the 
State whose representative I am, justice to the people of the whole 
country, in legislation for whose behalf I am called to particlj)ate, 
justice to the Constitution I am sworn to support, justice to the 
rights of American citizenship it secures, and to human liberty, 
now imperiled, require me to go further. Gladly would I re- 
frain speaking of the spirit of this message, of the dangerous 
doctrines It promulgates, of the inconsistencies and contradictions 
of its author, of his encroachments upon the constitutional rights 
of Congress, of his assumption of unwarranted powers, which, if 
persevered in and not checked by the people, must eventually lead 
to a subversion of the Government and the destruction of liberty. 

" Congress, in the passage of the bill under consideration, sought 
no controversy with the President. So far from it, the bill was 
proposed with a view to carry out what were supposed to be the 
views of the President, and was submitted to him before its in- 
troduction in the ISenate. I am not about to relate private dec- 
larations of the President, but it is right that the American peo- 
ple should know that the controversy which exists between him 
and Congress in reference to this measure is of his own seeking. 
Soon after Congress met, it became apparent that there was a 
difference of opinion between the President and some members of 
Congress in regard to the condition of the rebellious States and 
the rights to be secured to freedmen. 

" The President, in his annual message, had denied the consti- 
tutional power of the General Government to extend the elective 
franchise to negroes, but he was equally decided in the assertion 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 263 

of the right of every man to life, liberty, and thtJ pursuit of 
haj^piness. This Avas his language : 

"'J5ut while I have no doubt that now, after the close of the war, it is 
not competent for the Ucneral Clovernment to extend the elective franchise 
in the several States, it is equally clear that good faith requires the security 
of the freedmen in their liberty and their property.' 

"There were some members of Congress who expressed the 
opinion that in the reorganization of the rebellious States the 
right of suffrage should be extended to the colored man, though 
this was not the prevailing sentiment of Congress. All were 
anxious for a reorganization of the rebellious States, and their 
admission to full participation in the Federal Government as soon 
as these relations could be restored with safety to all concerned. 
Feeling the importance of harmonious action between the differ- 
ent departments of the Government, and an anxious desire to 
sustain the President, for whom I had always entertained the 
highest respect, I had frequent interviews with him during the 
early part of the session. Without mentioning any thing said by 
him, I may with propriety state that, acting from the considera- 
tions I have stated, and believing that the passage of a law by 
Cobgress, securing equality in civil rights to freedmen and all 
other inhabitants of the United States, when denied by State 
.authorities, would do much to relieve anxiety in the North, to 
induce the Southern States to secure these rights by their own 
action, and thereby remove many of the obstacles to an early re- 
construction, I prepared the bill substantially as it is now re- 
turned with the President's objections. After the bill was intro- 
duced and printed, a copy was furnished him, and at a subsequent 
period, when it was reported that he was hesitating about sign- 
ing the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, he was informed of the condition 
of the Civil Rights Bill then pending in the House, and a hope 
expressed that if he had objections to any of its provisions he 
would make them known to its friends, that they might be rem- 
edied, if not destructive of the measure ; that there was believed 
to be no disposition on the part of Congress, and certainly none 
on my part, to have bills presented to him which he could not 
approve. He never indicated to me, nor, so far as I know, to 
any of its friends, the least objection to any of the provisions of 
the bill till after its passage. And how could he, consistently 



^64 THE THIETY-KIKTH COJfGBESS. 

witli himself? The bill was framed, as was supposed, in entire 
harmony with his views, and certainly in harmony with what he 
was then and has since been doing in protecting freedmen in their 
civil rights all through the rebellious States. It was strictly lim- 
ited to the protection of the civil rights belonging to every free- 
man, the birthright of every American citizen, and carefully 
avoided conferring or interfering with political rights or priv- 
ileges of any kind. 

* * * * "If the bill now before us, and which 
goes no further than to secure civil rights to the freedman, can 
not be passed, then the constitutional amendment proclaiming 
freedom to all the inhabitants of the land is a cheat and a 
delusion. 

"I can not better conclude what I have to say than in the 
language of Mr. Johnson on the occasion of the veto of the 
Homestead Bill, when, after stating that the fact that the Presi- 
dent was inconsistent and changed his oj)inion with reference 
to a great measure and a great principle, is no reason why a 
Senator or Representative, who has acted understandingly, should 
change his opinion. He said : 

" ' I hope the Senate and House of Representatives, who have sanctictoed 
this bill by more than a two-thirds majority, will, according to the Consti- 
tution, exercise their privilege and power, and let the bill become a law of 
the land, according to the high behest of the American peoi:)le.' " 

On the next day, April 5th, Mr. Johnson, of ISIaryland, made 
a speech sustaining the Veto Message. He argued that negroes 
were not citizens of the United States by reason of their birth in 
the United States, and that Congress had no authority by law to 
declare them such. To sustain his position, he made quotations 
from the opinion of the minority in the Dred Scott case, aS' ren- 
dered by Mr. Justice Curtis. He then proceeded to reply to 
some of Mr. Trumbull's arguments against the Veto Message : 
" The honorable member from Illinois disposes of the President's 
objection to the first section of this bill by saying that it is 
merely declaratory. I know it is competent for any legislative 
body, on a question where diiference of opinions exist in relation 
to any legal proposition, to remove them by declaratory legisla- 
tion ; but that is not the purpose of this bill. It professes to be 
passed in the exercise of a positive and absolute power to change 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 265 

the law — not to declare what the law was in order to remove 
doubts, but to make the law. It assumes, or otherwise there 
^vould be no occasion for it, that birth alone does not confer 
citizenship ; and assuming that no citizenship would exist in con- 
sequence of birth alone, it declares that birth alone, in spite of 
State constitution and State laws, shall confer citizenship. Now, 
with all deference to the opinion of the honorable Chairman of 
the Committee on the Judiciary, that seems to me to be a propo- 
sition as clearly erroneous as any proposition can be in relation 
to constitutional law. The States were sovereign before the Con- 
stitution w\as adopted ; and the Constitution not only, according 
to its very terms, does not profess to confer upon the Government 
of the United States all governmental power, but as far as Con- 
gress is concerned, professes to confer upon that department of 
the Government only the particular delegated powers there enum- 
erated ; but so anxious were the framers of that instrument and 
the great men of that day, to whom the subsequent organization 
of this Government was left, that although they had no doubt as 
to the principle that only the delegated powers w^ere granted, (and 
the debates in the Convention itself as well as the debates in the 
conventions of the several States, when the Constitution was be- 
fore them for adoption or rejection, all went upon the theory that 
no powers were conferred except such as were expressly granted, or 
as were reasonably implied to be as necessary to carry out the pow- 
ers expressly granted,) by the tenth amendment adopted recently 
after the Constitution went into operation, and recommended by 
the men, many of whom were the framers of the Constitution 
itself, that the powders not delegated by the Constitution, and not 
denied to the States by the same instrument, were to be considered 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 

" Standing, therefore, as well upon the nature of the Govern- 
ment itself, as a Government of enumerated powers specially dele- 
gated, as upon the express provision that every thing not granted 
was to be considered as remaining with the States unless the Con- 
stitution contained some particular prohibition of any power before 
belonging to the States, what doubt can there be that if a State 
possessed the power to declare who should be her citizens before 
the Constitution was adopted that power remains now as absolute 
and as conclusive as it was when the Constitution was adopted? 
The bill, therefore, changes the whole theory of the Government. 



2G6 THE THIRTT-JYIJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

" The President, then, I think, is right. I go further than he 
does. He expresses a doubt whether Congress has "the power ; I 
affirm, with all deference to the better judgment of the majority 
of the Senate who voted for the bill, and to that of the honorable 
Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, that it is perfectly 
clear that no such power exists in Congress as the one attempted 
to be exercised by the first section. I hold, with Mr. Justice 
Curtis — and his opinion to this day has never been questioned — 
that citizenship of the United States consequent upon birth in a 
State is to depend upon the fact whether the constitution and 
laws of the State make the party so born a citizen of the State. 

" But that is not all. This first section has another provision. 
Not satisfied with making the parties citizens and clothing them 
with all the rights belonging to white citizens by the laws of the 
States, it says that they ^ shall be subject to like punishment, 
pains, and penalties, and to none other.' That invades the juris- 
diction of the States over their criminal code. Congress assumes 
to define a crime, and defining a crime gives to its own courts ex- 
clusive jurisdiction over the crime and the party charged with its 
perpetration. It strikes at the criminal code of the States. The 
result, therefore, of the three provisions in this section is, that 
contrary to State constitutions and State laws, it converts a man 
that is not a citizen of a State into a citizen of the State ; it gives 
him all the rights that belong to a citizen of the State ; and it 
provides that his punishment shall only be such as the State laws 
impose upon white citizens. Where is the authority to do that ? 
If it exists, it is still more obvious that the result is an entire 
annihilation of the power of the States. It seems to be the fash- 
ion of the hour — I do not know that my honorable friend from 
Illinois goes to that extent — to hold to the doctrine that the 
sooner every thing is vested in the Government of the United 
States the better for the country. It is a perilous delusion. If 
such a proposition had been supposed to be found any where in 
the Constitution of the United States, it never would have been 
adopted by the people ; and if it is assumed, or if it is considered 
as constitutionally existing by virtue of some power not before 
known, the Government will not last half a century. I have not 
time to read from the writings. of Mr. Madison and Mr. Hamilton 
and the decisions of the Supreme Court on the question. 

"But you, INIr. President, know very well that consolidation 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 267 

of power in the Government of the United States was looked 
upon as cc^in ruin to republican institutions. In the first 
place, it would bo sure to result in anarchy ; and in the second 
place, in order to be saved fronx the horrors of anarchy, we shouhl 
be compelled to take refngc in despotic power, and the days of 
constitutional liberty would soon be numbered. The doubt then 
was, and the doubt now should be more firmly settled in the pub- 
lic mind, that a country as extensive as that of the United States 
can not exist except by means of divided sovereignties ; one sov- 
ereignty having charge of all external matters, or matters between 
the States to which the powers of the States are inadequate ; the 
other sovereignties having power over all internal matters to the 
management of which they arc adequate. Despotism would soon 
be our fate, preceded by anarchy; the military chieftain instead 
of being looked upon, as he should be by every republican, with 
alarm and concern, would be hailed as a savior in order to save 
us from the horrors of disorganization.'^ 

"The honorable member referred to the act of 1790, but it 
relates entirely to different subjects, and all the statutes to which 
he adverted are statutes of the same description. What is the 
twenty-sixth section of the act of 1790 to which he referred? 
The preceding section provided that no one should sue a foreign 
minister, and the section to which my friend referred particularly, 
said that if a party did sue a foreign minister he should be liable 
to be punished. Certainly ; but why ? Because the Government 
of the United States was vested with the exclusive authority in 
all cases depending upon the law of nations ; and the law of na- 
tions saving from responsibility embassadors accredited to the 
United States, for civil debts, he who attempted to interfere 
offended against the Government, and he offended in relation to 
a subject exclusively committed to the General Government. The 
power, therefore, which Congress exerted in the particular legis- 
lation to which the honorable member reverted is just the power 
which they exert when they provide for the punishment of any 
man M'ho counterfeits the currency of the United States, or forges 
its paper, or forges its bonds, or interferes with the administration 
of the Post-office Department. These are all powers incidental 
to the possession of the express power, and in the case to which 
he adverted the express power was one necessarily belonging to 
the Government, because it was a power belonging to and regu- 



268 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

lated by the law of nations, and not by any municipal reo-u- 
lation. * 

" The honorable member from Illinois tells us that the Presi- 
dent's objection, that there are eleven States not now represented 
is entitled to no consideration whatever. The honorable member 
seems to suppose that the President adverted to the foct that there 
were eleven States not represented as showing that Congress pos- 
sessed no constitutional authority to legislate upon the subject, 
supposing that they would have had the authority if those States 
were represented. That is not the view taken by the President; 
it is an entire misapprehension of the doctrine of the President. 
He says no such thing, and he intimates no such thing. But as- 
suming, what in another part of the message he denies, that the 
authority might be considered as existing, he submits as a question 
of policy whether it is right to change the whole domestic econ- 
omy of those eleven States, in the absence of any representation 
upon this floor from th#n. ]My honorable friend asks whose 
fault it is that they are not represented. Why are they not here? 
He says their hands are reeking with the blood of loyal men ; 
that they are unable to take the oath which a statute that he as- 
sumes to be constitutional has provided ; and he would have the 
country and the Senate to believe that that is the reason why they 
are not here. Is that the foot, Mr. President ? These States are 
organized, and how organized? What have they done? They 
have abolished slavery by an astonishing unanimity; they have 
abolished nearly all the distinctions which antecedently existed 
between the two races. They have permitted the negroes to sue. 
they have permitted them to testify ; they have not yet permitted 
them to vote. 

"Why are they not received? Because, in the judgment of the 
Senate, before the States can be considered as restored. Congress- 
ional legislation on the subject is necessary. Whose fault is it 
that there has not been Congressional legislation ? Is it the fault 
of the eleven States ? Certainly not ; it is our own fault. And 
why is it that we are in point of fact delaying their admission, 
whether it is to be considered as a fault or not? Because we 
want to inquire into the condition of these States. Why, in the 
name of Heaven ! how long have we been here ? We came here 
early in December, and this is the month of April ; and here we 
may remain until July, or, as rumor has it, until next December; 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 269 

and shall we be satisfied within that time that Congressional leg- 
islation may be safely adopted? 

"I have a word or two more to say. My honorable friend 
from Illinois, as it seemed to me — his nature is impulsive, and 
perhaps he was carried further than he intended — seemed to in- 
timate that the President of the United States had not acted 
sincerely in this matter; that his usurpation was a clear one, 
and that he was to be censured for that usurpation. "What has 
he done? He has vetoed this bill. He had a constitutional right 
to do so. Not only that ; if he believed that the effect of the bill 
would be that which he states in his Veto Message, he was not only 
authorized but bound to veto it. His oath is to 'preserve' as 
well as to ' protect and defend ' the Constitution of the United 
States; and believing, as he does, and in that opinion I concur, 
that this bill assails the Constitution of the United States, he 
would have been false to his plighted faith if he had not returned 
it with his objections. 

" He desires — and who does not ? — that the Union shall be re- 
stored as it originally existed. He has a policy which he thinks 
is best calculated to effect it. He may be' mistaken, but he is 
honest. Congress may differ with him. I hope they will agree 
sooner o.r later, because I believe, as I believe in my existence, 
that the condition in which the country now is can not remain 
without producing troubles that may shake our reputation, not 
only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of the civilized world. Let 
the day come when we shall be again together, and then, forget- 
ting the past, hailing the present, and looking forward to the 
future, we shall remember,- if we remember the past at all, for 
the exhibition of valor and gallantry disj)layed on both sides, 
and find in it, when we become one, a guarantee that in the fu- 
ture no foreign hostilities are to be dreaded, and that no civil 
discord need be apprehended." 

Mr. Trumbull said : " The opinion of Judge Curtis, from which 
the Senator read, was the opinion of a dissenting judge, entitled 
to very great credit on account of the learning and ability of that 
judge, but it was not the opinion of the court, and an examina- 
tion of the entire opinion, which is very lengthy, would perhaps 
not sustain the precise principles the Senator from Maryland laid 
down. But, sir, I have another authority which I think of equal 
weight with that of Judge Curtis — not pronounced in a judicial 



270 THE THIETY-KIKTH COJ{GRESS. 

tribunal it is triio, but by one of the most eminent members of 
the bar in this nation; I may say by a gentleman who stands 
at the head of the bar in America at this time — an opinion pro- 
nounced, too, in the exercise of official duties; and I propose to 
read a few sentences from that opinion, for it is to be found re- 
ported in the Congressional Globe containing the proceedings of 
this body less than ninety days ago. This is the language: 

" 'While they [negi'oes] were slaves, it was a very different question; but 
now, when slavery is terminated, and by terminating it you have got rid of 
the only obstacle in the way of citizenshij^^ two questions arise: first, 
Whether that fact itself does not make them citizens? Before they were 
not citizens, because of slavery, and only because of slavery. Slavery abol- 
ished, why are they not just as much citizens as they would have been had 
slavery never existed ? My opinion is that they become citizens, and I hold 
that opinion so strongly that I should consider it unnecessary to legislate 
on the subject at all, as far as that class is concerned, but for the ruling of 
the Supreme Court, to which I have adverted.' 

" Sir, that opinion was held by the honorable Senator from Ma- 
ryland who made this speech to-day. He holds the opinion so 
strongly now that slavery is abolished, which was the only obsta- 
cle in the way of their being citizens, that he would want no legisla- 
tion on the subject but for the Dred Scott decision ! "What further 
did the Senator from Maryland say less than ninety days ago ? It is 
possible, doubtless — it is not only possible but it is certainly true — 
that the Senator from Maryland, by reading the conclusive argu- 
ments of the Veto Message in regard to Chinese and Gypsies, has 
discovered that he was in error ninety days ago. I Isy no means 
mean to impute any wrong motive to the Senator from Maryland, 
but simply to ask that he will pardon me if I have not b|pn able 
to see the conclusive reasoning of the Veto Message." 

After qvioting still further from Mr. Johnson's speech, made on 
a previous occasion, Mr. Trumbull said : " But as I am up, I will 
refer to one other point to which the Senator alluded, and that is 
in regard to the quotation which I made yesterday from the stat- 
ute of 1790. I quoted that statute for the purpose of showing 
that the provisions in the bill under consideration, which it was 
insl.sted allowed the punishment of ministerial ^fficers and judges 
wlio should act in obedience to State laws and under color of State 
laws, wore not anomalous. I read a statute of 1790 to show that 
the Congress of the United States, at that day, provided for pun- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 271 

ishing both judges and officers who acted under color of State law 
in defiance of a law of the United States. How does the Senator 
answer that? He says that was on a different subject; the law 
of 1790 provided for punishing judges and officers who did an 
act in violation of the international law, jurisdiction over which is 
conferred upon the nation. Let me ask the Senator from Mary- 
land, if the bill under discussion does not provide for the i)unish- 
ment of persons who violate a right secured by the Constitution 
of the United States ? Is a right which a citizen holds by virtue 
of the Constitution of his country less sacred than a right which 
he holds by virtue of international law ? " 

Mr. Johnson replied as follows : " It is singular, in my esti- 
mation, how a gentleman with a mind as clear as Mr. Trura- 
bull's, with a perspicacity that is a little surprising, could have 
fallen into the error of supposing that there is any inconsistency 
between the doctrin-e contained in the speech to which he has ad- 
verted and the one which I have mantained to-day. AYhat I 
said then I say now, that as far as the United States are con- 
cerned, all persons born within the limits of the United States are 
to be considered as citizens, and that without reference to the color 
or the race ; and after the abolition of slavery the negro Mould 
stand precisely in the condition of the white man. But the hon- 
orable member can* hardly fail, I think — certainly he can not 
when I call his attention to it — to perceive that that has noth- 
ing to do with the question now before the Senate. His bill 
makes them citizens of the United States because of birth, and 
gives them certain rights within the States." 

Mr. Fessenden asked: "Were not your remarks made on this 
very question in this bill?" 

" No," replied Mr. Johnson ; " on another bill." He continued : 
" What I maintain is this — and I have never doubted it, because 
I entertained the same opinion when I made those remar8:s that 
I entertain now — that citizenship of the United States, in conse- 
quence of birth, does not make a party a citizen of the State in 
which he is born unless the Constitution and laws of the State 
recognize him as a citizen. Now, what does this bill propose? 
All born within the United States are to be considered citizens 
of the United States, and as such shall have in every State all 
the rights that belong to any body else in the State as far as the 
particular subjects stated in the bill are concerned. Now, I did 



27^ TEE THIETY-MI:N'TH COJ^GBESS. 

suppose, and I shall continue to suppose, it to be clear, unless I 
am met with the almost paramount authority of the Chairman of 
the Judiciary Committee, that citizenship, by way of birth, con- 
ferred on the party as far as he and the United States were con- 
cerned, is not a citizenship which entitles him to the privilege of 
citizenship within the State where he is born ; if it be true, and 
I submit that it is true beyond all doubt, that over the question 
of State citizenship the authority of the State Government is 
supreme. 

" Now, the honorable member is counfounding the status of a 
citizen of the -United States and the status of a citizen of the 
United States who as such is a citizen of the State of his resi- 
dence. Maintaining, as I do, that there is no authority to make 
any body a citizen of the United States so as to convert him 
thereby into a citizen of a State, there is no authority in the 
Constitution for this particular bill, which says that because he 
is a citizen of the United States he is to be considered a citizen 
of any State in which he may be at any time with reference to 
the rights conferred by this bill. 

Mr. Trumbull replied: "I desire simply to remark that the 
speech from w-hich I quoted, made by the Senator from Maryland, 
was made upon this very bill. It was in reference to this bill 
that he was speaking w^hen he laid down 4he proposition that 
every person born in the United States since the abolition of 
slavery was a citizen of the United States, and if there was any 
doubt about it, it was proper for us to declare them so, and not 
only proper, but our duty to do so ; and to make the matter 
specific, the honorable Senator voted for this proposition, which 
I w^ill now^ read, on the yeas and nays : 

" 'All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign 
Power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of 
the United States, without distinction of color.' 

" Upon the adoption of that proposition as an amendment, it 
not being in the bill as originally introduced, the Senator from 
Maryland, with thirty others, voted in the affirmative. So we 
have his high, authority for saying that all persons born in the 
United States, and not subject to any foreign Power, are citizens 
of the United States, exactly as it appears in this bill.'' 

" Mr. Yates, of Illinois, remarked : " I remember very well 



■J 
CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 273 

tliat the Senator from Maryland offered an amendment to the 
Freedmen's Bureau Bill to this effect : to strike out the words 
' without distinction of color.' The Freedmen's Bureau Bill ap- 
plied legislation by Congress to the frcedmen in the States and 
to the condition of the frcedmen in the States. It was legislation 
that affected the frcedmen in the rebellious States. If I remem- 
ber aright the Senator from Maryland moved to strike out the 
words ' without distinction of color ' in one section of that bill, 
and for that motion he gave this reason : because, under the Con- 
stitution of the United States, as amended, abolishing slavery in 
all the States and Territories of the United States, the frcedmen 
occupied precisely the same position with any other citizen of the 
United States in any State or Territory. I understood him as 
taking the broad position, which I have maintained, and which 
Republican Senators have maintained, and which I think the 
country maintains, that under the Constitution, as amended, the 
freedman occupies precisely the same position as any man born in 
any State or Territory of the United States; and that was the 
object, if I understood the Senator from Maryland, of his moving 
to amend the Freedmen's Bureau Bill by striking out the words 
' without distinction of color.' 

" I recognize the authority of the decisions quoted by the 
Senator from Maryland before the adoption of the amendment to 
the Constitution. The States had the power over the question 
of slavery in the States before the amendment to the Constitu- 
tion; but by the amendment to the Constitution, in which the 
States have concurred, the freedman becomes a free man, entitled 
to the same rights and privileges as any other citizen of the 
United States." 

Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, spoke in favor of the veto, pre- 
mising that his words, " if they are not to convince any body in 
the Senate, may go to the country and be reflected on there." 
Mr. Cowan said he was quite willing that all the people of this 
country should enjoy the rights conferred upon them by this bill. 
But, supposing the bill had all the merit in the world, it would 
not be effective to attain the ends hoped for by its fi-iends ; and 
apart from that, its provisions were exceedingly dangerous. It 
gave married women and minors the right to make and enforce 
contracts. The grammatical structure of a portion of the bill 
was such as to enable a corrupt, passionate, or prejudiced judge 
18 



^74 TEE THIRTY-J^'IJ^TE COJTGRESS. 

to take advantage of it in order to widen the jurisdiction of the 
United States courts, and drag into them all the business which 
liad heretofore occupied the State courts. This would be enough 
in this nineteenth century to make a man tremble for the fate of 
constitutional government. " If/' said Mr. Cowan, " we had un- 
doubted authority to pass this bill, under the circumstances I 
would not vote for it, on account of its objectionable phraseology, 
its dubious language, and the mischief which might attend upon 
a large and liberal construction of it in the District and Circuit 
Courts of the United States." The trouble and expense of ob- 
taining justice in the United States courts, but one, or at most 
two existing in any of the Southern States, would debar the 
African from applying to them for redress. "Your remedy," 
Siiid the Senator, " is delusive ; your remedy is no remedy at all ; 
and to hold it up to the world as a remedy is a gross fraud, how- 
ever pious it may be. It is no remedy to the poor debtor that 
you prosecute his judge, and threaten him with fine and im- 
prisonment. It is no remedy to the poor man with a small claim 
that you locate a court one or two hundred miles away from him 
which is so expensive in its administration of justice that he can 
not enter there. 

"There is another provision of the bill, which, notwithstand- 
ing the act of Congress relied upon by the honorable Senator 
from Illinois, I think is unquestionably anomalous, and to me 
not only anomalous, but atrocious; and that is, the substitution 
of an indictment for the writ of error. What has been the law 
of these United States heretofore? When an act of Congress 
came in contact with a State law, and the judge of a State court 
decided that the law of Congress was unconstitutional, there was 
an appeal given to the defeated party to the Supreme Court of 
the United States in order to determine the constitutionality of 
the law. But, sir, who, until the last few months, ever heard of 
making the judge a criminal because he decided against the con- 
stitutionality of a law of the United States ? One would think 
we were being transported back to the dark ages of the world 
when a man is to be accused and perhaps convicted of a crime 
who has done nothing more than honestly and conscientiously 
discharged his duty. I know that the persons of embassadors are 
sacred, and I know that it is a very high ofiense against the law 
of nations, which no civil judge of any court could justify, to in- 




,EPermeJ<'=°^ 




AA^m: M. STE-WART 
senator from nevada 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 275 

vade this sacred right of the embassador, but every body knows 
that that is an exceptional case. Every body knows that in 
all times and at all ages the judge was punishable who did 
not respect the person of an embassador. But that is not this 
case. That analogy will not help the third section of this bill. 
It is openly avowed upon the floor of the Senate of the United 
States^ in the year of our Lord 1866, in the full blaze and light 
of the nineteenth century, that the indictment is to be a substi- 
tute for the writ of error, and it is justified because a judge ought 
to be indicted who violates the sacred person of an embassador ! 
What potency there must be in the recent amendment of the Con- 
stitution which has foisted the negro and set him upon the same 
platform as the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary 
of Great Britain or of all the Russias to the United States of 
America, and made him as sacred as an embassador, and the judge 
who decides against him is to be punished as a criminal ! " 

Mr. Stewart showed that States might easily avoid all the an- 
noying operations of this bill which were feared by its opponents : 
" When I reflect how very easy it is for the States to avoid the 
operation of this bill, how very little they have to do to avoid the 
operation of the bill entirely, I think that it is robbed of its co- 
ercive features, and I think no one has any reason to complain 
because Congress has exercised a power, which it must be con- 
ceded it has, when it has exercised it in a manner which leaves 
it so easy for the States to avoid the operation of this bill. If 
passed to-day, it has no operation in the State of Georgia; it is 
impossible to commit a crime under this bill in the State of 
Georgia; and the other States can place themselves in the same 
position so easily that I do not believe they ought to complain." 

He then read the second section of an act passed in Georgia, 
precisely similar to the first section of the Civil Rights Bill. 
Nothing couldJ)e done in Georgia under "color of law," which 
would subject^fficers to the penalties provided by the Civil 
Rights Bill. " It being so easily avoided by being complied with, 
by doing a simple act of justice, by carrying out the spirit of the 
constitutional amendment, I can not give my consent to defeat 
a bill the purpose of which is good, the operation of which is so 
innocent, and may be so easily avoided." 

The Republican Senators were desirous of bringing the bill to 
a final vote on this evening, but on account of the illness of 



276 THE THIBTr-J^IJfTH COJfGRESS. 

Senator Wright, of New Jersey, it was proposed by Democratic 
members to apjioint some hour on the following day when the 
vote should be taken in order that they might have a full vote. 

Mr. Wade, of Ohio, said : " If this was a question in the ordi- 
nary course of legislation, I certainly would not object to the 
proposition which the gentlemen on the other side make ; but I 
view it as one of the greatest and most fundamental questions 
that has ever come before this body for settlement, and I look 
upon it as having bearings altogether beyond the question on this 
bill. The bill is, undoubtedly, a very good one. There is no 
constitutional objection to it; there has been no objection to it 
raised that creates a doubt in the mind of any mortal man ; but, 
nevertheless, we are at issue with the President of the United States 
upon a question peculiarly our own. The President of the United 
States has no more power under the Constitution to interpose his 
authority here, to prescribe the principle upon which these States 
should be admitted to this Union, than any man of this body has 
out of it. The Constitution makes him the executive of the laws 
that we make, and there it leaves him ; and what is our condition ? 
We who are to judge of the forms of government under which 
States shall exist; we, who are the only power that is charged 
with this great question, are to be somehow or other wheedled 
out of it by the President by reason of the authority that he 
sets up. 

" Sir, we can not abandon it unless we yield to a principle that 
will unhinge and unsettle the balances of the Constitution itself. 
If the President of the United States can interpose his authority 
upon a question of this character, and can compel Congress to 
succumb to his dictation, he is an emperor, a despot, and not a 
President of the United States. Because I believe the great 
question of congressional power and authority is at stake here, 
I yield to no importunities of the other side. I fed , myself justi- 
fied in taldng every advantage which the Almighl^has put into 
my hands to defend the jjower and authority of this body, of 
which I claim to be a part. I will not yield to these appeals of 
comity on a question like this ; but I will tell the President and 
every body else that, if God Almighty has striken one member 
so that he can not be here to uphold the dictation of a despot, I 
thank him for his interposition, and I will take advantage of it 
if I can." 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 277 

Mr. McDongall, of California, replied to Mr. Wade. This 
wayAvard Senator from California has wide notoriety from his 
unhappy habits of intemperance. He has been described by a 
writer unfriendly to his politics as " the most brilliant man in the 
Senate ; a man so wonderfully rich, that though he seeks to beggar 
himself in talents and opportunities, he has left a patrimony large 
enough to outdazzlc most of his colleagues." He frequently would 
enter the Senate-chamber in a condition of apparent stupor, un- 
able to walk straight ; and after listening a few moments to what 
was going on, has arisen and spoken upon the pending question 
in words of great beauty and force. 

On this occasion Mr. McDougall is described as having been 
in a worse condition than usual. His words were muttered 
rather than spoken, so that only those immediately about him 
could hear; and yet his remarks were termed by one of his au- 
ditors as "one of the neatest little speeches ever heard in the 
Senate." His remarks were as follows : " The Senator from Ohio 
is in the habit of appealing to his God in vindication of his judg- 
ment and conduct ; it is a common thing for him to do so ; but 
in view of the present demonstration, it may well be asked who 
and what is his God. In the old Persian mythology there was 
an Ormudz and an Ahriman — a god of light and beauty, and a 
god of darkness and death. The god of light sent the sun to 
shine, and gentle showers to fructify the fields; the god of dark- 
ness sent the tornado, and the tempest, and the thunder, scathing 
with pestilence the nations. And in old Chaldean times men 
came to worship Ahriman, the god of darkness, the god of pesti- 
lence and famine; and his priests became multitudinous; they 
swarmed the land; and when men prayed then their offerings 
were, * AVe will not sow a field of grain, we will not dig a well, 
we will not plant a tree.' These were the offerings to the dark 
spirit of evil, until a prophet came who redeemed that ancient 
land ; but he did it after crucifixion, like our great Master. 

" The followers of Ahriman always appealed to the same spirit 
manifested by the Senator from Ohio. Death is to be one of his 
angels now to redeem the Constitution and the laws, and to estab- 
lish liberty. Sickuees, suffering, evil, are to be his angels ; and he 
thanks the Almighty, his Almighty, that sickness, danger, and 
evil are about ! It may be a good god for him in this world ; but 
if there is any truth in what we learn about the orders of religion 



mS THE THIRTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

in this Christian world, his faith will not help him when he shall 
ascend up and ask entrance at the crystal doors. If there can be 
evil expressed in high places that communicates evil thoughts, that 
communicates evil teachings, that demoralizes the youth, who re- 
ceive impressions as does the wax, it is by such lessons as the 
Senator from Ohio now teaches by word of mouth as Senator in 
this Senate hall. 

" Sir, the President of the United States is a constitutional offi- 
cer, clothed with high power, and clothed with the very power 
which he has exercised in this instance ; and those who conferred 
upon him these powers were men such as Madison, and Jay, and 
Hamilton, and Morris, and Washington, and a host of worthies ; 
men who, I think, knew as much about tlie laws of government, 
and how they should be rightly balanced, as any of the wisest who 
now sit here in council. It is the duty of the President of the 
United States to stand as defender of the Constitution in his place 
as the conservator of the rights of the people, as tribune of the 
people, as it was in old Kome when the people did choose their 
tribunes to go into the senate-chamber among the aristocracy of 
Rome, and when they passed laws injurious to the Roman people, 
to stand and say, ' I forbid it.' 

" That is the veto power, incorporated wisely by our fathers in 
the Constitution, conferred upon the President of *the United 
States, and to be treated with consideration ; and no appeal of the 
Senator to his God can change the Constitution or the rights of 
the President of the United States, or can prevent a just consid- 
eration of the dignity of this Senate body by persons who have 
just consideration, who feel that they are Senators. 

" It is a strange thing, an exceedingly strange thing, that when 
a few Senators in the city of Washington, ill at their houses, give 
assurance that they can be here to act upon a great public question 
on the day following this, we should hear a piece of declamation, 
the Senator appealing to his God, and saying, with an lo triumphc 
air, ' Well or ill, God has made them ill.' Sir, the god of deso- 
lation, the god of darkness, the god of evil is his god. I never 
expected to hear such objections raised among honorable men; 
and men to be Senators should be honorable men. I never ex- 
pected to hear such things in this hall ; and I rose simply to say 
that such sentiments were to be condemned, and must receive my 



CIVIL RIGHTS BJLL. 379 

condemnation, now and here; and if it amounts to a rebuke, I 
trust it may be a rebuke." 

The Senate adjourned, with the understanding that the vote 
shoukl be taken on the following day. In the morning hour on 
that day, as the States were called lor the purpose of giving Sen- 
ators an opportunity of introducing petitions or resolutions, Mr. 
Lane, of Kansas, presented a joint resolution providing for ad- 
mitting Senators and Representatives from the States lately in 
insurrection. This bill, emanating from a llepublican Senator, 
who professed to have framed it as an embodiment of the Presi- 
dent's poUcy, was evidently designed to have an influence upon 
the action of the Senate upon the Civil Eights Bill. It proposed 
that Senators and Representatives from the late rebellious States 
should be admitted into Congress whenever it should appear that 
they had annulled their ordinances of secession, ratified the con- 
stitutional amendment abolishing slavery, repudiated all rebel 
debts, recognized the debts of the United States, and extended 
the elective franchise to all male persons of color residing in the 
State, over twenty-one years of age, who can read and write, and 
who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and 
fifty dollars. 

As a reason for introducing this measure, Mr. Lane, of Kansas, 
remarked :' " I have been laboring for months to harmonize the 
President of the United States with the majority on the floor of 
Congress. I thought yesterday that there was a hope of securing 
such a result. It did seem that some of the members of this body 
were disposed to harmonize with the President. I proposed to 
go very far yesterday to secure that harmony. But while pur- 
suing this course, we were awakened by one of the most vindic- 
tive assaults ever made upon any official, by either friend or oppo- 
nent, from the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] — an assault upon 
my personal friend, a man who for two years sat side by side with 
me here, whom I learned to respect and admire for his pluck, his 
ability, and integrity, and to love for his manly virtues ; a man 
whom I originally selected as the candidate of the Republican 
party for the second office within the gift of that party ; a man 
whom I urged on the Republican convention at Baltimore as their 
candidate ; a man whose election I did my utmost to secure against 
the efforts of the Senator from Ohio. In the most critical moment 
of that political campaign, an assault was made on our presi- 



£80 THE THIRTY-?nKTE COJ^GBESS. 

dential candidate in the same spirit evinced by liim yesterday in 
his attack njwn the President. I defended Ihe candidate of the 
Reiiublican party against that assault, and I defend the President 
of the Republican party against the assault of yesterday. 

" ' A despot ! ' ^ A dictator ! ' In -what ? In seeking to re- 
construct the rebellious States in violation of the wishes of the 
Congress of the United States ? When Mr. Johnson took his 
seat in the presidential chair, I ask you, sir, what had Congress 
done ? The people of the United States had done this : Mr. Lin- 
coln had marked out the policy of reconstruction, since adopted 
by Mr. Johnson, and the people of the United States, the party 
to which the Senator from Ohio and myself belong, indorsed by 
triumphant majorities that very reconstruction policy. A despot 
for proposing, in violation of the wishes of the Congress of the 
United States, to reconstruct the insurrectionary States upon the 
theory expressed in that joint resolution annulling the ordinances 
of secession, ratifying the amendment to the Constitution abolish- 
ing slavery, repudiating the Confederate debt, indorsing the na- 
tional debt, and extending suffrage to all colored men who can 
read the Constitution of the United States and sign their names, 
and to all colored men owning and paying taxes upon §250 worth 
of property ! 

" Mr. President, I am not as conversant with the constituency 
of the Senator from Ohio as he is, but I venture the assertion 
that outside of New England there is not a single Northern State 
in this Union but will by a majority vote to indorse the policy 
of reconstruction advised by President Johnson and expressed in 
that joint resolution. You can not carry before the people of this 
country suffrage to the unqualified black man. You can not find 
a State in this Union outside of New England, in my judgment, 
that will indorse that policy. Restrict it to a qualification clause, 
as the President of the United States recommends, and you can 
carry the Republican Union party every-where, and with una- 
nimity. 

" The President of the United States ' a despot ' for exercising 
a constitutional right in vetoing a bill passed by Congress ! Mr. 
President, had the Senator from Ohio occupied the position which 
is occupied by President Johnson, in my judgment, he would have 
vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. ' A despot ! ' AVhat is the exercise 
of the veto power? It amounts merely to a vote to reconsider, 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 281 

with the lights given in his reasons for the veto. When before 
has the exercise of a constitutional right justified a political friend 
of the President of the United States in denouncing tliat Presi- 
dent as a despot and a dictator ? He has been and is now, in my 
judgment, as anxious to harmonize the difficulties in the Union 
party as any Senator upon this floor. If he was met in the same 
spirit, that party would be reunited and this Union would be re- 
stored. His advances are met by insult ; his advances are met by 
denunciation from the leader of the Republican party upon this 
floor in language without a parallel. Mr.-*President, so far as I 
am concerned, I propose to-day and hereafter to take my position 
alongside the president of the Republican party, and stand there 
unflinchingly so long as he remains faithful to the principles of 
that party, defending him against the Senator from Ohio as I de- 
fended his predecessor against the same Senator." 

Mr. Lane then expressed his desire that his proposition should 
lie upon the table and be printed. An order having been entered 
to that effect, Mr. Wade addressed the Senate. He remarked: 
"It is said I made an attack on the President of the United 
States. As a Senator upon this floor, I care no more about the 
opinions of the President of the United States than I do about 
those of any respectable Senator upon this floor, or any Senator 
on this floor. Who is your President, that every man must bow 
to his opinion ? Why, sir, we all know him ; he is no stranger 
to this body. We have measured him ; we know his height, his 
depth, his length, his breadth, his capacity, and all about him. 
Do you set him up as a paragon and declare here on the floor 
of this Senate that you are going to make us all bow down before 
him ? Is that the idea ? You [to ^Mr. Lane, of Kansas,] are 
going to be his apologist and defender in whatever he may propose 
to do ! Is that the understanding of the Senator from Kansas ? 

" I do not believe that his constituents will be quite satisfied 
with so broad a declaration, that he is to wear any man's collar, 
and follow him Avherever he may go. Did I use harsh language 
toward the President yesterday ? All that I said I stand by to- 
day and forever. What was the question upon which I made 
those observations, and what has been the opinion of the President 
heretofore ? what has been his action since ? Here are three mill- 
ion people, our friends, friends to the Government, who generously 
came forward in its difficulty, and helped us throughout the war, 



'382 THE TRIETT-jyiJ^TS COJ^GRESS. 

sacrificed their blood and their lives to maintain the issue on our 
side, and who were faithful beyond all men that were ever faith- 
ful before, to us during the whole of the difficulty, every-where 
assisting our brave soldiers in the field, laying down their lives 
to maintain our principles, and ministering in every way to the 
misfortunes of our brave men whenever they fell into the hands 
of those worse than savages with whom we were w^arring; and 
now these men are laboring, are under one of the most frightful 
despotisms that ever settled down upon .the heads of mankind. 
Three million people' are exposed to the outrages, the insolence, 
the murder of those worse than savages, their former masters, 
murdered as we hear every day, oppressed evory-where, their 
rights taken away, their manhood trampled under foot ; and Con- 
gress, under the Constitution of the United States, endeavors to 
extend to them some little protection, and how are we met here? 
Every attempt of your Moses has been to trample them down 
worse, and to throw every obstruction in the way of any relief 
that could be proposed by Congress. He has from all appear- 
ances become their inveterate and relentless foe, making violent 
war uj)on any member of Congress who dares raise his voice or 
give his vote in favor of any measure having for its object the 
amelioration of the condition of these poor peojile. Talk to me 
about the President being their friend ! When did it ever hap- 
pen before that a great measure of relief to suffering humanity on 
as broad a scale as this was met by the stern veto of the President 
of the United States, and without being able when he undertakes 
to make his obstruction to our measures to designate a single 
clause of the Constitution that he pretends has been violated. 

"Yesterday what was the issue? I was charged with great 
cruelty on this floor, because I was unwilling to wait for recruits 
to be brought in here for the purpose of overthrowing the ground . 
we had taken upon this important question whether these poor 
people shall have relief or not. Now, I wish to say that I am 
willing to extend courtesy to our old associates on this floor un- 
der other circumstances ; but when you extend this kind of cour- 
tesy to them, the result is death and destruction to three million 
people, tramj)led under the feet of their former masters. My 
courtesy is extended to those poor men, and I would not wait a 
moment that their enemies may be brought in here in order to 
prevent our doing any thing for their relief, joining with the 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 283 

President, who is determined, if we may judge by his acts, that 
no measure having for its object any relief shall be extended to 
them. 

" Did you hear the fact stated here the other day, that bills 
were drawn with a view to escape the anathemas of your Presi- 
dent, and were exhibited to him, and he asked ' if he had any 
objection to them to look them over well, because if we can, con- 
sistent with the object aimed at, make them clear of any objection 
you may have, we will do it?' 

" I said, sir, that he seemed to have meditated a controversy 
with Congress from the beginning, and he has. He has treated 
our majorities as hostile to the people ; two thirds of both branches 
of Congress have been treated by him as mere factionists, dis- 
unionists, enemies to the country, bent upon its destruction, bar- 
gaining with the enemy to destroy the Government. This is the 
way the President has treated Congress, and every bill they have 
passed, which promised any relief to the men whom we are bound 
to protect, lias been trampled under the Executive heel ; and even 
when members of this body did what I say they ought not to 
have done — for I do not approve of my brother Trumbull's go- 
ing up to the President, when he has a measure pending here as 
a Senator, to ask the President, in the first place, whether he will 
approve of it or not ; even when he was asked if he objected to 
this measure, and made no objection, he still undertakes to veto it. 

" If Congress should recede from the position they have taken 
to claim jurisdiction over this great question of readmitting these 
States, from that hour they surrender all the power that the Con- 
stitution places in their hands and that they were sworn to sup- 
port, and they are the mere slaves of an accidental Executive ; of 
a man who formerly associated with us upon this floor ; who was 
no more infallible than the rest of us poor mortals ; and yet the 
moment, by death or accident, he is placed in the executive chair, 
it would seem as if some Senators believed him to be endowed 
with superhuman wisdom, and ought to be invested with all the 
powers of this Government ; that Congress ought to get on their 
knees before him, and take his insults and his dictation without 
resentment and without even an attempt to resist. Some States 
may send such instrumentalities here, but God knows some will 
not ; and I pity those that do, for they would hold their freedom 
on a very uncertaim tenure. 



284 THE THIRTY-mNTH COJfGBESS. 

" Some gentlemen may be j^atient under the charge of treason, 
perhaps the more so because treason is becoming popular in this 
day ; but^ sir, I am a little too old-fashioned to be charged by the 
executive branch of this Government as a traitor on the floor of 
Congress, and not resent it. I do not care whether he be King 
or President that insinuates that I am a disunionist or traitor, 
standing upon the same infamous platform with the traitors of 
the South ; I will not take it from any mortal man, high or low, 
without repelling the charge. If any man here is tame enough 
to do it, he is too tame to be the Senator of a proud-spu-ited 
people, conscious of their own freedom. I claim to be their re- 
presentative, and they will censure me if they do not like my 
doctrine. 

"And now, Mr. President, I wish to make an appeal to those 
great, patriotic statesmen on this floor, who, by their love of prin- 
ciple, by their unswerving honesty, unseduced by the blandish- 
ments of executive power, unawed by threats of violence, stand 
here to defend the rights of the people upon this floor, and will 
stand here forever. I say to you Senators, we, the majority who 
are stigmatized as traitors, are the only barrier to-day between 
this nation and anarchy and despotism. If we give way, the 
hope of this nation is lost by the recreancy — yea, sir, I will say 
the treachery — of a man who betrayed our confidence, got into 
power, and has gone into the camp of the enemy, and joined 
those who never breathed a breath of principle in common with 
us." 

Mr. Lane rej^lied : " I stated that the party to which I belong 
nominated the present President of the United States and elected 
him, and that as long as he fought within our lines and remained 
in our party, I would endeavor to defend him upon this floor 
against all unjust assaults. After making that statement, the 
Senator from Ohio, forgetting the position he occupies, has sug- 
gested that I have taken upon myself the collar of the President 
of the United States. I hurl the suggestion in the teeth of the 
Senator from Ohio as unworthy a Senator. I wear a collar ! The 
pro-slavery party of the United States, backed by a Democratic 
Administration, sustained and supported by the army of the 
United States, could not fasten a collar upon the handful of 
Kansas squatters of whom I had the honor to be the leader. 
The gallant fight made in this Senate-chamber by the Senator 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. . 285 

from Ohio, aided by the Senators from Massachusetts and other 
Senators, would have been of but little avail had it not been 
for that other fight that was made upon the prairies of Kansas 
under the lead of your humble speaker. I wear a collar ! In- 
dicted for treason by a pro-slavery grand jury, hunted from State 
to State by a writ founded ujion that indictment for treason, and 
$100,000 offered for my head ! Jim Lane wear a collar ! Wher- 
ever he is known, that charge will be denounced as false by both 
friends and enemies," 

Mr. Brown, of Missouri, made a short speech, in which he set 
forth the position of Mr. Lane, of Kansas, on questions previ- 
ously before the Senate, showing their inconsistency with some 
of his recent remarks. 

Mr. Doolittle next delivered a speech, in the course of which 
he called attention to a bill which he had drawn " to provide ap- 
propriate legislation to enforce article thirteen of the Amendments 
to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States." 
His object in presenting this bill was to "avoid the objections 
raised by men not only in this body, but in the other house, and 
the objections raised by the President of the United States, to 
the bill now pending. 

He endeavored to explain his position and changes of opinion 
upon the Civil Rights : " While this measure was upon its pass- 
age, I took no part in its discussion except upon a single point 
in relation to the Indian tribes. The bill passed, and the final 
vote was taken when I was not present in the Senate ; but it was 
not under such circumstances that, had I been here, I should not 
have voted for the bill. I have no doubt that if I had been 
present I should have voted for it. My attention was not drawn 
very earnestly to the consideration of all the provisions of this bill 
until the bill had passed from Senate and had gone to the House 
of Representatives, Avhen the speeches of Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, 
and of Mr. Delano, of Ohio, both able and distinguished lawyers 
of that State, arrested my attention and called me very carefully 
to the consideration of the great questions which are involved in 
the bill. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives; 
it went to the President. From the fact that it was not signed 
and returned to this body at once, and from all I heard, I be- 
came satisfied that, at least, if the bill was not to be returned 

19 



286 J'SH THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GBJESS. 

\Yitli objections^ it was being withheld for most earnest and seri- 
ous consideration by the Executive. 

" Then, Mr. President, it was, in view of all that had occurred, 
Avhat had been said by gentlemen in whom I had the utmost — I 
may say unbounded — confidence, that I began to look into this 
measure and to study it for myself. It is not my purpose now 
to go into a discussion of the provisions of this bill any further 
than to say that there are provisions in it upon which the judg- 
ments of the best patriots, the best jurists, the most earnest men 
disagree. There are men, in whom I have entire confidence, who 
maintain that all its provisions are within the purview of the 
Constitution; there are others in whom I have confidence, and 
equal confidence, who maintain directly the contrary ; and this 
has brought me seriously to consider whether there be no com- 
mon ground upon which friends can stand and stand together. 
Sir, I may have failed to find it ; but if I have, it is not because 
I have not most earnestly sought for it with some days of study 
and most earnest reflection. I have endeavored to put upon 
paper what I believe would carry this constitutional provision 
into effect and yet would be a common ground on which we could 
unite without violating the conscientious convictions of any." 

In concluding his remarks, Mr. Doolittle referred to instruc- 
tions received by him from the Legislature of Wisconsin : " Mr. 
President, I have received, in connection with my colleague, a 
telegraphic dispatch from the Governor of the State of Wiscon- 
sin, which I have no doubt is correct, although I have not seen 
the resolution which is said to have been passed by the Legisla- 
ture, in which it is stated that the Legislature has passed a reso- 
lution instructing the Senators in Congress from Wisconsin to 
vote for the passage of the Senate bill commonly known as the 
Civil Rights Bill, the veto of the President to the contrary not- 
withstanding. I have already stated, from my stand-point, the 
reasons why, in ray judgment, I can not do it; I have stated 
them freely and frankly, and, as a matter of course, I expect to 
abide the consequences. I know that it has sometimes been said 
to me, by those, too, in whom I would have confidence, that for 
me, under circumstances like these, not to follow the instructions 
• of the Legislature of my State, would be to terminate my polit- 
ical life. Sir, be it so. I never held or aspired to any other 
office politically than the one I now hold; and God knows, if I 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 287 

know my own lieart, if I can see this Union restored after this 
gigantic war which has put down the rebellion, and to which I 
have lent my support, I shall he satisfied. I do not desire to 
remain in political life beyond that hour. There is nothing in 
that which will have the slightest influence whatever upon me. 
Tlic duty which I owe to myself, the duty which I owe to the 
country, the duty which I owe to the union of these States, and 
the preservation of the rights of the States, and the duty which 
I owe to the great Republican party, which I would still desire 
to save, prompts me to pursue the course which I now do." 

Mr. Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, addressed the Senate in a 
long speech, of which the following is the closing paragraph : 
"Public justice is often slow, but generally sure. Think you 
that the people will look on with folded arms and stolid indiifer- 
cnce and see you subvert their Constitution and liberties, and on 
their ruins erect a grinding despotism. No; erelong they will 
rise up with earthquake force and fling you from power and 
place. I commend to your serious meditation these words : ' Go 
tell Sylla that you saw Cains Marius sitting upon the ruins of 
Carthage ! ' " 

Mr. Saulsbury thought a revolution would result from the 
passage of this bill : " In my judgment the passage of this bill 
is the inauguration of revolution — bloodless, as yet, but the at- 
tempt to execute it by the machinery and in the mode provided 
in the bill will lead to revolution in blood. It is well that the 
American people should take warning in time and set their house 
in order, but it is utterly imjiossible that the people of this coun- 
try will patiently entertain and submit to this great wrong. I 
do not say this because I want a revolution ; Heaven knows we 
have had, enough of bloodshed; we have had enough of strife; 
there has been enough of mourning in every household; there 
are too many new-made graves on which the grass has not yet 
grown for any one to wish to see the renewal of strife ; but, sir, 
attempt to execute this act within the limits of the States of this 
Union, and, in my judgment, this country will again be plunged 
into all the horrors of civil war." 

Mr. McDougall said: "I agree with the Senator from Dela- 
ware that this measure is revolutionary in its character. The 
majority glory in their giant power, but they ought to under- 
stand that it is tyrannous to exercise that power like a giant. A 



288 THE TEIRTY-JflJrTH COJfGRESS. 

revolution now is moving onward ; it has its center in the North- 
east. A sj^irit has been radiating out from there for years past 
as revohitionary as the spirit that went out from Charleston, 
South Carolina, and perhaps its consequences will be equally 
fatal, for when that revolutionary struggle comes it will not be a 
war between the North and its power and the slaveholding pojD- 
ulation of the South; it will be among the North men them- 
selves, they who have lived under the shadows of great oaks, and 
seen the tall pine-trees bend." 

At the conclusion of the remarks by the Senator from Califor- 
nia, the vote was taken, with the following result: 

Yeas — Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Cres- 
well, Edmunds, Fessenden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Howard, 
Howe, Kirkwoo'i, Lane of Indiana, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, 
Eamsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, "Wade, Willey, "Wil- 
liams, "Wilson, and Yates — 33. 

Nays — ^Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Guthrie?- Hendricks, 
Johnson, Lane of Kansas, McDougall, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, 
Van Winkle, and "Wright — 15. 

Absent — Mr. Dixon. 

The President 2^'>'0 tempore then made formal announcement of 
the result: "The yeas being 33 and the nays 15, the bill has 
passed the Senate by the requisite constiutional majority, not- 
withstanding the objection of the President to the contrary." 

On the 9th of April, 1866, three days after the passage of the 
bill in the Senate, the House of Representatives proceeded to its 
consideration. The bill and the President's Veto Message hav- 
ing been read, Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, demanded the previous ques- 
tion on the passage of the bill, the objections of the President to 
the contrary notwithstanding, and gave his reasons for so doing: 
"Mr. Speaker, the debate w4iich occurred on this bill occupied 
two weeks of the time of this House. Some forty speeches were 
made, and the debate was not brought to a close until all had 
been heard who expressed a desire to speak upon the bill. At 
the close of that debate, the bill was passed by more than two- 
thirds of this House. It has been returned to us with the objec- 
tions of the President to its becoming a law. I do not propose 
to reopen the discussion of this measure ; I am disposed to leave 
the close of this debate to the President by the message which 
has just been read. I ask the friends of this great measure to 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 289 

answer the argument and statements of that message by their 
votes." 

The vote was finally taken on the question, SShall this bill 
pass, notwithstanding the objections of the President?" The fol- 
lowing is the record of the vote : 

Yeas — ^Messrs. Alley, Allison, Delos R. Ashley, James j\I. Ashley, Baker, 
Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, Boutwell, 
Brandegee, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader W. Clarke, Sid- 
ney Clarke, Cobb, Colfax, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, Darling, Davis, Dawes, 
Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Dodge, Donnelly, Eckley, Eggleston, Eliot, 
Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Griswold, Ilale, Abner C. 
Harding, Hart, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Hotch- 
kiss, Asah'cl W. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, James 
R. Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckcs, Kasson, Kel- 
ley, Kelso, Ketcham, Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, 
Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, McClurg, Mclndoe, McKee, 
McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, New- 
ell, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Pomeroy, Price, 
Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shella- 
barger, Spalding, Starr, Stevens, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, 
Trowbridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, 
Ward, Elihu B. Washburne, Henry D. Washburn, William B. Washburn, 
Welker, Wentworth, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and 
Woodbridge— 122. 

Nays — Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Boyer, Coffroth, Dawson, Dennison, EI- 
dridge, Finck, Glossbrenner, Aaron Harding, Harris, Hogan, Edwin N. 
Hubbell, James M. Humphrey, Latham, Lc Blond, Marshall, McCullough, 
Niblack, Nicholson, Noell, Phelps, Radford, Samuel J. Randall, William H. 
Randall, Raymond, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosseau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, 
Smith, Strouse, Taber, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Whaley, Wlnfield, and 
Wright^-41. 

Not Voting — Messrs. Ames, Anderson, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Chanler, 
Culver, Driggs, Dumont, Goodyear, Grider, Demas Hubbard, Johnson, Jones, 
Julian, Kerr, Kuykendall, Sloan, Stilwell, Warner, and Williams — 2L 

The Speaker then made the following announcement: "The 
yeas are 122, and the nays 41. Two-thirds of the House hav- 
ing, upon this reconsideration, agreed to the passage of the bill, 
and it being certified officially tliat a similar majority of the Sen- 
ate, in which the bill originated, also agreed to its passage, I do, 
therefore, by the authority of the Constitution of the United 
States, declare that this bill, entitled 'An act to protect all per- 
sons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish the 
means of their vindication,' has become a law." 
19 



290 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJfGEESS. 

This aunouncement was followed by prolonged applause on the 
floor of the House and among the throng of spectators in the gal- 
leries. 

The following is the form in which the great measure so long 
pending became a law of the land : 

'^Be it enacted ly the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United 
States and not subject to any foreign Power, excluding Indians not taxed, 
are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens 
of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery 
or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the 
party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right in every 
State and Territory in the United States to make and enforce contracts, to 
sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and 
convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws 
and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by 
white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, 
and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the 
contrary notwithstanding. 

" Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That any person who, under color of 
any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to 
be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the deprivation of 
any right secured or protected by this act, or to different punishment, pains, 
or penalties on account of such person having at any time been held in a 
condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for 
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his 
color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, shall 
be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished 
by a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or 
both, in the discretion of the court. 

" Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That the district courts of the United 
States, within their respective districts, shall have, exclusively of the courts of 
the several States, cognizance of all crimes and offenses committed against 
the provisions of this act, and also, concurrently with the circuit courts of 
the United States, of all causes, civil and criminal, affecting persons who are 
denied or can not enforce in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State 
or locality where they may be, any of the rights secured to them by the first 
section of this act; and if any suit or prosecution, civil or criminal, has been 
or shall be commenced in any State court against any such person, for any 
cause whatsoever, or against any officer, civil or military, or other person, 
for any arrest or imprisonment, trespasses or wrongs, done or committed by 
virtue or under color of authority derived from this act or the act establish- 
ing a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees, and all acts amend- 
atory thereof, or for refusing to do any act upon the ground that it would 
be inconsistent with this act, such defendant shall have the right to remove 
such cause for trial to the proper district or circuit court in the manner 



CIVIL BIGHTS BILL. 291 

prescribed by the 'Act relating to habeas corpus and regulating judicial pro. 
ceedings in certain cases,' approved March 3, 1863, and all acts amendatory 
thereof. The jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters hereby conferred 
on the district and circuit courts of the United States shall be exercised 
and enforced in conformity with the laws of the United States, so far as 
such laws are suitable to carry the same into effect; but in all cases where 
such laws arc not adapted to the object, ot are deficient in the provisions 
necessary to furnisli suitable remedies and punish offenses against law, the 
common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of 
the States wherein the court having jurisdiction of the cause, civil or crim- 
inal, is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution 
and laws of the United States, shall be extended to and govern said courts 
in the trial and disposition of such cause, and, if of a criminal nature, in 
the infliction of punishment on the party found guilty. 

" Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That the district attorneys, marshals, 
and deputy-marshals of the United States, the commissioners appointed by 
the circuit and territorial courts of the United States, with powers of arrest- 
ing, imprisoning, or bailing offenders against the laws of the United States, 
the officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, and every other officer 
who may be specially empowered by the President of the United States, 
shall be, and they are hereby, specially authorized and required, at the ex- 
pense of the United States, to institute proceedings against all and every 
person who shall violate the provisions of this act, and cause him or them 
to be arrested and imprisoned, or bailed, as the case may be, for trial before 
such court of the United States, or territorial court, as by this act has cog- 
nizance of the offense. And with a view to affording reasonable protection 
to all persons in their constitutional rights of equality before the law, with- 
out distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary 
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted, and to the prompt discharge of the duties of this act, 
it shall be the duty of the circuit courts of the United States and the supe- 
rior courts of the Territories of the United States, from time to time, to in- 
crease the number of commissioners, so as to afford a speedy and convenient 
means for the arrest and examination of persons charged with a violation 
of this act. And such commissioners are hereby authorized and required 
to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred on them by 
this act, and the same duties with regard to offenses created by this act, as 
they are authorized by law to exercise with regard to other offenses against 
the laws of the United States. 

" Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of all mar- 
shals and deputy-marshals to obey and execute all warrants and precepts 
issued under the provisions of this act, when to them directed; and should 
any marshal or deputy-marshal refuse to receive such warrant or other pro- 
cess when tendered, or to use all proper means diligently to execute the 
same, he shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in the sum of $1,000, to the 
use of the person upon whom the accused is alleged to have commmitted 
the offense. And the better to enable the said commissioners to execute their 
duties faithfully and efficiently, in conformity with the Constitution of the 



292 THE TEIRTY-J^IKTH COJ^GRESS. 

United States and the requirements of this act, they arc hereby authorized 
and empo-vvered, within their counties respectively, to appoint, in writing, 
under their hands, any one or more suitable persons, from time to time, to 
execute all such warrants and other process as may be issued by them in 
the lawful performance of their respective duties; and the persons so ap- 
pointed to execute any warrant or process as aforesaid, shall have authority 
to summon and call to their aid the bystanders or the posse comitaius of the 
proper county, or such portion of the land and naval forces of the United 
States, or the militia, as may be necessary to the performance of the duty 
witt which they are charged, and to insure a faithful observance of the 
clause of the Constitution which prohibits slavery, in conformity with the 
provisions of this act ; and said warrants shall run and be executed by said 
officers anywhere in the State or Territory within whith they are issued. 

"Sec. 6. And be it further enacted^ That any person who shall knowingly 
and willfully obstruct, hinder, or prevent any officer, or other person, charged 
with the execution of any warrant or process issued under the provisions 
of this act, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him or them, from 
arresting any person for whose apprehension such warrant or process may 
have been issued, or shall rescue or attempt to rescue such person from 
the custody of the officer, other person or persons, or those lawfully assist- 
ing as aforesaid, when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given 
and declared, or who shall aid, abet, or assist any person so arrested as 
aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from the custody of the officer or 
other person legally authorized as aforesaid, or shall harbor or conceal any 
person for whose arrest a warrant or process shall have been issued as 
aforesaid, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest after notice or knowledge 
of the fact that a warrant has been issued for the apjyehension of such per- 
son, shall, for either of said offenses, be subject to a fine not exceeding 
$1,000, and imprisonment not exceeding six months, by indictment and con- 
viction before the district court of the United States for the district in which 
said offense may have been committed, or before the proper court of crim- 
inal jurisdiction, if committed within any one of the organized Territories 
of the United States. 

"Seo. 7. And be it further enacted, That the district attorneys, the mar- 
shals, the deputies, and the clerks of the said district and territorial courts 
shall be paid for their services the like fees as may be allowed to them for 
similar services in other cases; and in all cases where the proceedings are 
before a commissioner, he shall be entitled to a fee of ten dollars in full for 
his services in each case, inclusive of all services incident to such arrest 
and examination. The person or persons authorized to execute the process 
to be issued by such commissioners for the arrest of offenders against the 
prpvisions of this act, shall be entitled to a fee of five dollars for each per- 
son he or they may arrest and take before any such commissioner as afore- 
said, with such other fees as may be deemed reasonable by such commis- 
sioner for such other additional services as may be necessarily performed by 
him or them, such as attending at the examination, keeping the prisoner in 
custody, and providing him with food and lodging during his detention, and 
■until the final determination of such commissioner, and in general for per- 



CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. ' 293 

forming such other duties as may be required in the premises ; such foes 
to be made up in conformity with the fees usually charged by the officers 
of the courts of justice within the proper district or county, as near as may 
be practicable, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States on the 
certificate of the judge of the district within which the arrest is made, and 
to be recoverable from the defendant as part of the judgment in case of 
conviction. 

"Sec. 8. And be it further enacted, That whenever the President of the 
United States shall have reason to believe that offenses have been or are 
likely to be committed against the provisions of this act within any judicial 
district, it shall be lawful for him, in his discretion, to direct the judge, 
marshal, and district attorney of such district to attend at such place within 
the district, and for such time as he may designate, for the purpose of the 
more speedy arrest and trial of persons charged with a violation of this 
act; and it shall be the duty of every judge or other officer, when any such 
requisition shall be received by him, to attend at the place, and for the 
time therein designated. 

"Sec. 9. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for the Presi- 
dent of the United States, or such person as he may empower for that pur- 
pose, to employ such part of the land or naval forces of the United States, 
or of the militia, as shall be necessary to prevent the violation and enforce 
the due execution of this act. 

" Sec. 10. And be it further enacted, That upon all questions of law aris- 
ing in any cause under the provisions of this act a final appeal may be taken 
to the Supreme Court of the United States." 



294 TS^ THIETY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SECOND FREEDMEN'S BUREAU BILL BECOMES A LAW. 

The Discoveky of the Majoeitt — The Senate Bill — The House Bill — 
Its Provisions — Passage op the Bill — Amendment and Passage in the 
Senate — Committee of Conference — The Amendments as Accepted — 
The Bill as Passed — The Veto — The Proposition of a Democrat 
Accepted — Confusion in Leadership — Passage of the Bill over the 
Veto — It Becomes a Law. 

CONGRESS having succeeded in placing the Civil Rights Bill 
in the statute-book in spite of Executive opposition, was not 
disposed to allow other legislation which was regarded as 
important to go by default. The disposition of the President, 
now plainly apparent, to oppose all legislation which the party 
that had elevated him to office might consider appropriate to the 
condition of the rebel States, the majority in Congress discovered 
that, if they would make progress in the work before them, they 
must be content to do without Executive approval. The defec- 
tion of the President from the principles of the party which 
had elected him, so far from dividing and destroying that party, 
had rather given it consolidation and strength. After the veto 
of the Civil Rights Bill, a very few members of the Senate and 
House of Representatives who had been elected as Republicans 
adhered to the President, but the most of those who had wavered 
stepped forward into the ranks of the " Radicals," as they were 
called, and a firm and invincible " two-thirds " moved forward 
to consummate legislation which they deemed essential to the 
interests of the nation. 

So fully convinced were the majority that some effective legisla- 
tion for the freedmen should be consummated, that two days after 
the final vote in which the former bill failed to pass over the veto, 
Senator Wilson introduced a bill ^^to continue in force the Bu 



THE FREEDMEJ^. 295 

reau for the relief of Freedraen and Refugees," which was read 
twice and referred to the Committee on Military Aifairs. 

The bill, however, which subsequently became a law, origi- 
nated in the House of Representatives. In that branch of Con- 
gress was a Special Committee on the Freedmen, who were able 
to give more immediate and continuous attention to that class of 
people than could committees such as those of the Judiciary and 
Military Affairs, having many other subjects to consider. 

The Committee on the Freedmen, having given much time 
and attention to the perfection of a measure to meet the neces- 
sities of the case, o^i the 22d of May reported through their 
chairman, Mr. Eliot, " A bill to continue in force and amend an 
act entitled ' an act to establish a Bureau for the relief of Freed- 
men and Refugees, and for other purposes.' " 

This bill provided for keeping in force the Freedmen's Bureau 
then in existence for two years longer. Some of the features to 
which the President had objected in his veto of the former bill 
had been modified and in part removed. In providing for the 
education of freedmen, the commissioner was restricted to co- 
operating so far with the charitable people of the country as to 
furnish rooms for school-houses and protection to teachers. The 
freedmen's courts were to be kept in existence till State legisla- 
tion should conform itself to the Civil Rights Bill, and the dis- 
turbed relations of the States to the Union were restored. The 
President was required to reserve from sale public lands, not ex- 
ceeding in all one million of acres, in Arkansas, Mississippi, 
Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, to be assigned in parcels of 
forty acres and less to loyal refugees and freedmen. 

One week after the introduction of the bill, its consideration 
was resumed. The question was taken without debate, and the 
bill passed by a vote of ninety-six in favor and thirty-two 
against the measure. Fifty-five members failed to vote. 

On the day following, May 30th, the clerk of the House con- 
veyed the bill to the Senate. It was there referred to the Com- 
mittee on Military Affairs, as that committee already ha'd before 
them seven bills relating to the same subject. Nearly a fortnight 
subsequently, the committee reported back to the Senate the 
House bill with certain amendments. The report of the com- 
mittee, and the amendments proposed therein, could not be con- 
sidered in the Senate until the lapse of another fortnight. On 



296 THE TRIRTY-KIJ^TR CONGRESS. 

the 26th of Juno, the amendments devised by the committee 
were read in the Senate and adopted. Mr. Davis made a number 
of attemjjts to have the bill laid on the table or deferred to a 
subsequent day, but without success. Mr. Hendricks and Mr. 
Buckalew made ineffectual attempts to amend the bill by pro- 
posing to strike out important sections. 

The Senate indulged in but little discussion of the bill or the 
amendments. The bill as amended finally passed the Senate by 
a vote of twenty-six for and six against the measure. The bill 
then went to the House for the concurrence of that body in the 
amendments passed by the Senate. 

The Committee on the Freedmen made a rejjort, which was 
adopted by the House, to non-concur in the amendments of the 
Senate. A Committee of Conference was appointed on the part 
of the Senate and the House. They, after consultation, made a 
rej)ort by which the Senate amendments, with some modifications, 
were adopted. 

Mr. Eliot, Chairman of the Committee on the Freedmen, and 
of the Committee of Conference on the part of the House, at the 
request of a member, thus exj3lained the amendments proposed by 
the Senate : " The first amendment which the Senate made to the 
bill, as it was passed by the House, was simply an enlargement 
of one of the sections of the House bill, which provided that the 
volunteer medical officers engaged in the medical department of 
the bureau might be continued, inasmuch as it was expected that 
the medical force of the regular army would be speedily reduced 
to the minimum, and in that case all the regular officers would 
be wanted in the service. It was therefore thought right that 
there should be some force connected with the Bureau of Refu- 
gees and Freedmen. The Senate enlarged the provisions of the 
House bill by providing that officers of the volunteer service now 
on duty might be continued as assistant commissioners and other 
officers, and that the Secretary of War might fill vacancies until 
other officers could be detailed from the regular army. That is 
the substance of the first material amendment. 

" The next amendment strikes out a portion of one of the sec- 
tions of the House bill, which related to the officers who serve as 
medical officers of the bureau, because it was provided for in the 
amendment to which I have just referred. 

"The next amendment strikes out from the House bill the 



THE FREEDMEJf. 297 

section which set apart, reserved from sale, a million acres of land 
in the Gulf States. It may perhaps be recollected that when th*e 
bill was reported from the conmiittee, I stated that, in case the bill 
which the House had then passed, and which was known as the 
Homestead Bill, and which was then before the Senate, should 
become a law, this section of the bill would not be wanted. The 
bill referred to has become a law, and this section five, providing 
for that reservation, has, tlierefore, been stricken from the bill. 

" The next amendment made by the Senate was to strike out a 
section of the House bill which simply provided that upon appli- 
cation for restoration by the former owners of the land assigned 
under General Sherman's field order, the application should not 
be complied with. That section is stricken out and another sub- 
stitufed for it, which provides that certain lands which are now 
owned by the United States, having been purchased by the United 
States under tax commissioners' sales, shall be assigned in lots of 
twenty acres to freedmen who have had allotments under General 
Sherman's field order, at the price for which the lands were pur- 
chased by the United States ; and not only that those freedmen 
should have such allotments, but that other freedmen who had 
had lots assigned to them under General Sherman's field order, 
and who may have become dispossessed of their land, should have 
assignments made to them of these lands belonging to the United 
States. I think the justice of that provision will strike every one. 
And it will be perhaps a merit in the eyes of many that it does 
not call upon the Treasury for the expenditure of any money. 
In the bill which was passed by the House, it will be recollected 
that there was a provision under which there should be purchased 
by the commissioner of the bureau enough public lands to be sub- 
stituted for the lands at first assigned to freedmen. Instead of that, 
provision is made by which they can have property belonging to 
the United States which has come into its possession under tax 
sales, and where the titles have been made perfect by lapse of time. 

" The next amendment of the Senate provides that certain lands 
which were purchased by the United States at tax sales, and which 
are now held by the United States, should be sold at prices not 
less than ten dollars an acre, and that the proceeds should be 
invested for the support of schools, without distinction of color 
or race, on the islands in the parishes of St. Helena and St. Luke. 
That is all the provision which was made for education. 



298 THE THIRTY-JflJ^TH COJVGBESS. 

" The only other material amendment made by the Senate gives 
to the commissioner of the bureau power to take property of the 
late Confederate States, held by them or in trust for them, and 
which is now in charge of the commissioner of the bureau, to 
take that property and devote it to educational purposes. The 
amendment further provides that when the bureau shall cease to 
exist, such of the late so-called Confederate States as shall have 
made provision for education, without regard to color, should 
have the balance of money remaining on hand, to be divided 
among them in proportion to their population." 

The vote followed soon after the remarks of Mr. Eliot, and 
the bill, as amended, passed the House of Representatives. 

The following is the bill as it went to the President for his 
approval : 

"An Act to continue in force and to amend 'An Act to establish a Bureau 
for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees,' and for other purposes. 

"5e it enacted by the Senate and House of Bepresentatives of the United Slates 
of America in Congress assembled, That the act to establish a bureau for the 
relief of freedmen and refugees, approved March third, eighteen hundred 
and sixty-five, shall continue in force for the term of two years from and 
after the passage of this act. 

"Sec. 2. And he it further enacted, That the supervision and care of said 
bureau shall extend to all loyal refugees and freedmen, so far as the same 
shall be necessary, to enable them, as speedily as practicable, to become 
self-supporting citizens of the United States, and to aid them in making the 
freedom conferred by proclamation of the commander-in-chief, by emanci- 
pation under the laws of States, and by constitutional amendment, availa- 
ble to them and beneficial to the republic. 

"Sec. 3. And he it further enacted, That the President shall, by and with 
■ the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint two assistant commissioners, 
in addition to those authorized by the act to which this is an amendment, 
who shall give like bonds and receive the same annual salaries provided in 
said act; and each of the assistant commissioners of the bureau shall have 
charge of one district containing such refugees or freedmen, to be assigned 
him by the commissioner, with the approval of the President. And the 
commissioner shall, under the direction of the President, and so far as the 
same shall be, in his judgment, necessary for the efficient and economical 
administration of the affairs of the bureau, appoint such agents, clerks, and 
assistants as may be required for the proper conduct of the bureau. Mili- 
tary officers or enlisted men may be detailed for service and assigned to 
duty under this act; and the President may, if, in his judgment, safe and 
judicious so to do, detail from the army all the officers and agents of this 
bureau; but no officer so assigned shall have increase of pay or allowances. 
Each agent or clerk, not heretofore authorized by law, not being a military 



THE FREEDMEJ^. 299 

officer, shall have an annual salary of not loss than five hundred dollars, nor 
more than tvreive hundred dollars, according to the service required of him. 
And it shall be the duty of the commissioner, when it can be done consist- 
ently with public intoi'cst, to appoint, as assistant commissioners, agents, 
and clerks, such men as have proved tlioir loyalty by faithful service in the 
armies of the Union during the rebellion. And all persons appointed to 
service under this act, and the act to which this is an amendment, shall be 
so far deemed in the military service of the United States as to bo under 
the military jurisdiction and entitled to the military protection of the Gov- 
ernment while in discharge of the duties of their office. 

"Sec. 4. And he it further enacted, That officers of the Veteran Reserve 
Corps or of the volunteer service, now on duty in the Frccdmen's Bureau 
as assistant commissioners, agents, medical officers, or in other capacities, 
whose regiments or corps have been or may hereafter be mustered out of 
service, may be retained upon such duty as officers of said bureau, with the 
same compensation as is now provided by law for their respective grades; 
and the Secretary of War shall have power to fill vacancies until other of- 
ficers can be detailed in their places without detriment to the public service. 

" Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That the second section of the act to 
which this is an amendment shall be deemed to authorize the Secretary of 
War to issue such medical stores or other supplies, and transportation, and 
afford such medical or other aid as may be needful for the purposes named 
in said section: Provided, That no person shall be deemed 'destitute,' 'suf- 
fering,' or ' dependent upon the Government for support,' within the mean- 
ing of this act, who is able to find employment, and could, by proper industry 
or exertion, avoid such destitution, suffering, or dependence. 

"Sec. 6. Whereas, by the provisions of an act approved February sixth, 
eighteen hundred and sixty-three, entitled 'An act to amend an act entitled 
"An act for the collection of direct taxes in insurrectionary districts within 
the United States, and for other purposes," approved June seventh, eighteen 
hundred and sixty-two,' certain lands in the parishes of Saint Helena and 
Saint Luke, South Carolina, were bid in by the United States at public tax 
sales, and, by the limitation of said act, the time of redemption of said 
lands has expired; and whereas, in accordance with instructions issued by 
President Lincoln on the sixteenth day of September, eighteen hundred and 
sixty-three, to the United States direct tax commissioners for South Caro- 
lina, certain lands bid in by the United States in the parish of Saint Hel- 
ena, in said State, were in part sold by the said tax commissioners to ' heads 
of families of the African race,' in parcels of not more than twenty acres 
to each purchaser; and whereas, under the said instructions, the said tax 
commissioners did also set apart as 'school-farms' certain parcels of land in 
said parish, numbered in their plats from one to sixty-three inclusive, mak- 
ing an aggregate of six thousand acres, more or less : Therefore, be it further 
enacted, That the sales made to 'heads of families of the African race,' un- 
der the instructions of President Lincoln to the United States direct tax 
commissioners for South Carolina, of date of September sixteenth, eighteen 
hundred and sixty-three, are hereby confirmed and established; and all 
leases which have been made to such 'heads of families' by said direct 



300 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH*COJ{GBESS. 

tax commissioners shall be changed into certificates of sale in all cases 
wherein the lease provides for such substitution; and all the lands now re- 
maining unsold, which come within the same designation, being eight thou- 
sand acres, more or less, shall be disposed qf according to said instructions. 

"Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, That all other lands bid in by the 
United States at tax sales, being thirty-eight thousand acres, more or less, 
and now in the hands of the said tax commissioners as the property of the 
United States, in the parishes of Saint Helena and Saint Luke, excepting 
the 'school-farms,' as specified in the preceding section, and so much as 
may be necessary for military and naval purposes at Hilton Head, Bay 
Point, and Land's End, and excepting also the city of Port Royal, on Saint 
Helena island, and the town of Beaufort, shall be disposed of in parcels of 
twenty acres, at one dollar and fifty cents per acre, to such persons, and to 
such only, as have acquired and are now occupying lands under and agree- 
ably to the provisions of General Sherman's special field order, dated at Sa- 
vannah, Georgia, January sixteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-five; and the 
remaining lands, if any, shall be disposed of, in like manner, to such per- 
sons as had acquired lands agreeably to the said order of General Sherman, 
but who have been dispossessed by the restoration of the same to former 
owners : Provided, That the lands sold in compliance with the provisioils 
of this and the preceding section shall not be alienated by their purchasers 
within six years from and after the passage of this act. 

"Sec. 8. And be it further enacted, That the 'school-farms' in the parish 
of Saint Helena, South Carolina, shall be sold, subject to any leases of the 
same, by the said tax commissioners, at public auction, on or before the 
first day of January, eighteen hundred and sixty^seven, at not less than ten 
dollars per acre; and the lots in the city of Port Royal, as laid down by 
the said tax commissioners, and the lots and houses in the town of Beau- 
fort, which are still held in like manner, shall be sold at public auction; 
and the proceeds of said sales, after paying expenses of the surveys and 
sales, shall be invested in United States bonds, the interest of which shall 
be appropriated, under the direction of the commissioner, to the support of 
schools, without distinction of color or race, on the islands in the parishes 
of Saint Helena and Saint Luke. 

" Sec. 9. And be it further enacted, That the assistant commissioners for 
South Carolina and Georgia are hereby authorized to examine the claims to 
lands in their respective States which are claimed under the provisions of 
General Sherman's special field order, and to give each person having a 
valid claim a warrant upon the direct tax commissioners for South Caro- 
lina for twenty acres of land; and the said direct tax commissioners shall 
issue to every person, or to his or her heirs, but in no case to any assigns, 
presenting such warrant, a lease of twenty acres of land, as provided for 
in section seven, for the term of sis years ; but, at any time thereafter, upon 
the payment of a sum not exceeding one dollar and fifty cents per acre, the 
person holding such lease shall be entitled to a certificate of sale of said 
tract of twenty acres from the direct tax commissioner or such officer as 
may bo authorized to issue the same; but no warrant shall be held valid 
longer than two years after the issue of the same. 



THE FREED MEK. 301 

"Sec. 10. And be it further enacted, That the direct tax commiasioners for 
South Carolina are hereby authorized and required, at the earliest day prac- 
ticable, to survey the lands designated in section seven into lots of twenty 
acres each, with proper motes and bounds distinctly marked, so that the sev- 
eral tracts shall be convenient in form, and, as near as practicable, have 
an average of fertility and woodland; and the expense of such surveys shall 
be paid from the proceeds of sales of said lands, or, if sooner required, out 
of any moneys received for other lands on these islands, sold by the United 
States for taxes, and now in the hands of the direct tax commissioners. 

"Sec. 11. And be it further enacted, That restoration of the lands now oc- 
cupied by persons under General Sherman's special field order, dated at 
Savannah, Georgia, January sixteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, shall 
not be made until after the crops of the present year shall have been gath- 
ered by the occupants of said lands, nor until a fair compensation -shall 
have been made to them by the former owners of said lands, or their legal 
representatives, for all improvements or betterments erected or constructed 
thereon, and after due notice of the same being done shall have been given 
by the assistant commissioner. 

" Sec. 12. And be it further enacted, That the commissioner shall have 
power to seize, hold, use, lease, or sell, all buildings and tenements, and 
any lands appertaining to the same, or otherwise, held under claim or title 
by the late so-called Confederate States, and any buildings or lands held in 
trust for the same by any person or persons, and to use the same or appro- 
priate the proceeds derived therefrom to the education of the freed people; 
and whenever the bureau shall cease to exist, such of the late so-called Con- 
federate States as shall have made provision for the education of 4heir citi- 
zens, without distinction of color, shall receive the sum remaining unex- 
pended of such sales or rentals, which shall be distributed among said States 
for educational purposes in proportion to their population. 

"Sec. 13. And be it further enacted, That the commissioner of this bureau 
shall at all times cooperate with private benevolent associations of citizens 
in aid of freedmen, and with agents and teachers, duly accrediled and ap- 
pointed by them, and shall hire or provide by lease buildings for purposes 
of education whenever such associations shall, without cost to the Govern- 
ment, provide suitable teachers and means of instruction ; and he shall fur- 
nish protection as may be required for the safe conduct of such schools. 

"Sec. 14. And be it further enacted, That in every State or district where 
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the re- 
bellion, and until the same shall be fully restored, and in every State or dis- 
trict whose constitutional relations to the Government have been practically 
discontinued by the rebellion, and until such State shall have been restored 
in such relations, and shall be duly represented in the Congress of the United 
States, the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give 
evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and per- 
sonal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceed- 
ings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, 
enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the con- 
stitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the 



30^ THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

citizens of such State or district, without respect to race or color, or previ- 
ous condition of slavery. And whenever in either of said States or districts 
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the 
rebellion, and until the same shall be fully restored, and until such State 
shall have been restored in its constitutional relations to the Government, 
and shall be duly represented in the Congress of the United States, the 
President, shall, through the commissioner and the officers of the bureau, 
and under such rules and regulations as the President, through the Secretary 
of War, shall prescribe, extend military protection and have military juris- 
diction over all cases and questions concerning the free enjoyment of such 
immunities and rights; and no penalty or punishment for any violation of 
law shall be imposed or permitted because of race or color, or previous con- 
dition of slavery, other or greater than the penalty or punishment to which 
white persons may be liable by law for the like offense. But the jurisdic- 
tion conferred by this section upon the officers of the bureau shall not ex- 
ist in any State where the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has not 
been interrupted by the rebellion, and shall cease in every State when the 
courts of the State and the United States are not disturbed in the peace- 
able course of justice, and after such State shall be fully restored in its con- 
stitutional relations to the Government, and shall be duly represented in the 
Congress of the United States. 

"Sec. 15. And be it further enacted, That the officers, agents, and employ- 
ees of this bureau, before entering upon the duties of their office, shall take 
the oath prescribed in the first section of the act to which this is an amend- 
ment; and all acts or parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this 
act are hereby repealed. 

On tlie IGth of July the President returned the bill to the 
House of Representatives, in which it originated, with his "ob- 
jections thereto" in writing. The following is 

THE VETO MESSAGE. 

'To the House of Representatives : 

"A careful examination of the bill passed by the two houses of Congress, 
entitled ' An act to continue in force and to amend " An act to establish a 
bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees," and for other purposes,' has 
convinced me that the legislation which it proposes would not be consistent 
with the welfare of the country, and that it falls clearly within the reasons 
assigned in my message of the 19th of February last, returning without my 
signature a similar measure which originated in the Senate. It is not my 
purpose to repeat the objections which I then urged. They are yet fresh in 
your recollection, and can be readily examined as a part of the records of 
one branch of the National Legislature. Adhering to the principles set forth 
in that message, I now reaffirm them, and the line of policy therein indi- 
cated. 

"The only ground upon which this kind of legislation can be justified is 
that of the war-making power. The act of which this bill was intended as 



THE FREEDMEJf. 303 

amendatory was passed during the existence of the war. By its own pro- 
visions, it is to terminate within one year from the cessation of hostilities 
and the declaration of peace. It is therefore yet in existence, and it is 
likely that it will continue in force as long as the freedmen may require the 
benefit of its provisions. It will certainly remain in operation as a law 
until some months subsequent to the meeting of the next session of Con- 
gress, when, if experience shall make evident the necessity of additional 
legislation, the two houses will have ample time to mature and pass the 
requisite measures. In the mean time the questions arise, Why should this 
war measure be continued beyond the period designated in the original act? 
and why, in time of peace, should military tribunals be created to continue 
until each ' State shall be fully restored in its constitutional relations to the 
Government, and shall be duly represented in the Congress of the United 
States?' It was manifest with respect to the act approved March 3, 1865, 
that prudence and wisdom alike required that jurisdiction over all cases 
concerning the free enjoyment of the immunities and rights of citizenship, 
as well as the protection of person and property, should be conferred upon 
some tribunal in every State or district where- the ordinary course of judicial 
proceeding was interrupted by the rebellion, and until the same should be 
fully restored. At that time, therefore, an urgent necessity existed for the 
passage of some such law. Now, however, war has substantially ceased; 
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings is no longer interrupted; the 
courts, both State and Federal, are in full, complete, and successful opera- 
tion, and through them every person, regardless of race or color, is entitled 
to and can be heard. The protection granted to the white citizen is al- 
ready conferred by law upon the freedman ; strong and stringent guards, by 
way of penalties and punishments, are thrown around his person and prop- 
erty^ and it is believed that ample protection will be afforded him by due 
process of law, without resort to the dangerous expedient of ' military tri- 
bunals,' now that the war has been brought to a close. The necessity no 
longer existing for such tribunals, which had their origin in the war, grave 
objections to their continuance must present themselves to the minds of all 
reflecting and dispassionate men. Independently of the danger in represen- 
tative republics of conferring upon the military, in time of peace, extraor- 
dinary powers — so carefully guarded against by the patriots and statesmen 
of the earlier days of the republic, so frequently the ruin of governments 
founded upon the same free principle, and.subversive of the rights and lib- 
erties of the citizen — the question of practical economy earnestly commends 
itself to the consideration of the law-making power. With an immense 
debt already burdening the incomes of the industrial and laboring classes, 
a due regard for their interests, so inseparably connected with the welfare 
of the country, should prompt us to rigid economy and retrenchment, and 
influence us to abstain from all legislation that would unnecessarily increase 
the public indebtedness. Tested by this rule of sound political wisdom, I 
can see no reason for the establishment of the 'military jurisdiction' con- 
ferred upon the officials of the bureau by the fourteenth section of the bill. 
" By the laws of the United States, and of the different States, competent 
courts. Federal and State, have been established, and are now in full prac- 



S04 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

tical operation. By means of these civil tribunals ample redress is afforded 
for all private wrongs, whether to the person or to the property of the citi- 
zen, without denial or unnecessary delay. They are open to all, without 
ret'ard to color or race. I feel well assured that it will be better to trust 
the rights, privileges, and immunities of the citizens to tribunals thus estab- 
lished, and presided over by competent and impartial judges, bound by fixed 
rules of law and evidence, and where the rights of trial by jury is guaran- 
teed and secured, than to the caprice and judgment of an officer of the 
bureau, who, it is possible, may be entirely ignorant of the principles that 
underlie the just administration of the law. There is danger, too, that con- 
flict of jurisdiction will frequently arise between the civil courts and these 
military tribunals, each having concurrent jurisdiction over the person and 
the cause of action — the one judicature administered and controlled by civil 
law, the other by the military. How is the conflict to be settled, and who 
is to determine between the two tribunals when it arises ? In my opinion 
it is wise to guard against such conflict by leaving to the courts and juries 
the protection of all civil rights and the redress of all civil grievances. 

" The fact can not be denied that since the actual cessation of hostili- 
ties many acts of violence — such, perhaps, as had never been witnessed in 
their previous history — have occurred in the States involved in the recent 
rebellion. I believe, however, that public sentiment will sustain me in the 
assertion that such deeds of wrong are not confined to any particular State 
or section, but are manifested over the entire country — demonstrating that 
the cause that produced them does not depend upon any particular locality, 
but is the result of the agitation and derangement incident to a long and 
bloody civil war. While the prevalence of such disorders must be greatly 
deplored, their occasional and temporary occurrence would seem to furnish 
no necessity for the extension of the bureau beyond the period fixed in the 
original act. Besides the objections which I have thus briefly stated, I may 
urge upon your consideration the additional reason that recent developments 
in regard to the practical operations of the bureau, in many of the States, 
show that in numerous instances it is used by its agents as a means of pro- 
moting their individual advantage, and that the freedmen are employed for 
the advancement of the personal ends of the officers, instead of their own 
improvement and welfare— thus confirming the fears originally entertained 
by many that the continuation of such a bureau for any unnecessary length 
of time would inevitably result in fraud, corruption, and oppression. 

"It is proper to state that in cases of this character investigations have 
been promptly ordered, and the offender punished, whenever his guilt has 
been satisfactorily established. As another reason against the necessity of 
the legislation contemplated by this measure, reference may be had to the 
'Civil Eights Bill,' now a law of the land, and which will be faithfully exe- 
cuted as long as it shall remain unrepealed, and may not be declared un- 
constitutional by courts of competent jurisdiction. By that act, it is enacted 
'that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign 
power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the 
•United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to 
any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a pun- 



THE FREEDMEJ\r. 805 

ishmont for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall 
have the same right in every State and Territory of the United States, to 
make and enforce contracts, to sue, to bo parties, and give evidence, to in- 
herit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, 
and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security 
of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject 
to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, stat- 
ute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.' 

"By the provisions of the act full protection is afforded, through the dis- 
trict courts of the United States, to all persons injured, and whose privi- 
leges, as t^y are declared, are in any way impaired, and heavy penalties 
are denounced against the person who wilfully violates the law. I need not 
state that that law did not receive my approval, yet its remedies are far pref- 
erable to those proposed in the present bill — the one being civil and the 
other military. 

" By the sixth section of the bill herewith returned, certain proceedings 
by which the lands in the 'parishes of St. Helena and St. Luke, South 
Carolina,' were sold and bid in, and afterward disposed of by the tax com- 
missioners, are ratified and confirmed. By the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, 
and eleventh sections, provisions by law are made for the disposal of the 
lands thus acquired to a particular class of citizens. While the quieting of 
titles is deemed very important and desirable, the discrimination made in 
the bill seems objectionable, as does also the attempt to confer upon the 
commissioners judicial powers, by which citizens of the United States are 
to be deprived of their property in a mode contrary to that provision of 
the Constitution which declares that no person ' shall be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property, without due process of law.' As a general principle, 
such legislation is unsafe, unwise, partial, and unconstitutional. It may 
deprive persons of their property who are equally deserving objects of the 
nation's bounty, as those whom, by this legislation, Congress seeks to ben- 
efit. The title to the land thus to be proportioned out to a favored class of 
citizens must depend upon the regularity of the tax sale under the law as 
it existed at the time of the sale, and no subsequent legislation can give 
validity to the rights thus acquired against the original claimants. The 
attention of Congi-ess is therefore invited to a more mature consideration 
of the measures proposed in these sections of the bill. 

"In conclusion, I again urge upon Congress the danger of class legisla- 
tion, so well calculated to kcBp the public mind in a state of uncertain ex- 
pectation, disquiet, and restlessness, and to encourage interested hopes and 
fears that the National Government will continue to furnish to classes of 
citizens, in the several States, means for support and maintenance, regard- 
less of whether they pursue a life of indolence or labor, and regardless, also, 
of the constitutional limitations of the national authority in times of peace 
and tranquillity. 

"The bill is herewith returned to the House of Representatives, in which 
it originated, for its final action. 

"ANDREW JOHNSON. 

«WashingtOx\, D. C, July IG, 1866." 

20 



306 THE THIRTT-KINTH COJ^GRESS. 

As soon as the reading of this document had been completed, 
a motion was passed that it should be laid on the table and printed. 
Notice was given that it would be called up for the action of the 
House on the following day. Mr. Le Blond, a Democrat, sug- 
gested that it would be too long to wait until to-morrow to pass 
it over the veto, and without debate. The sooner action was 
taken, the more apparent would be the bad animus. 

" I have no objection," said Mr. Eliot, taking him at his word. 
Otliers said, " There is no objection," whereupon the vote was re- 
considered by which the matter was postponed. 

The motion to reconsider the postponement was carried, and 
the previous question called, " Shall this bill become a law, the 
objections of the President to the contrary notwithstanding?" 

"I do not see why we need be in such a hurry," said Mr. 
Rogers. 

" One of your own side suggested that the vote better be taken 
now," replied Mr. Ashley. 

"Well, he was not in earnest, of course," said Mr. Rogers, 
creating some mirth by the remark. 

"I hope the gentleman will make no objection," said Mr. 
Le Blond, addressing his remark to Mr. Rogers. 

Mr. Ward suggested that " the Democrats should choose their 
leader, and not confuse us in this way." 

Without further parley, the vote was one hundred and four in 
the affirmative, thirty -three in the negative, and forty-five " not 
voting." The Speaker then announced, "Two-thirds having 
voted in the affirmative, the bill has, notwithstanding the objec- 
tions of the President, again passed." 

The Clerk of the House of Representatives immediately an- 
nounced the action of that body to the Senate. Other business 
was at once laid aside, and the Veto Message was read in the 
Senate. 

Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Saulsbury then addressed the Senate 
in support of the position of the President. The question being 
taken, thirty-three voted for and twelve against the bill. There- 
upon the President p7'o tempore announced, " Two-thirds of this 
body have passed the bill, and it having been certified that two- 
thirds of the House of Representatives have voted for this bill, 
I now pronounce that this bill has become a law." 








HON.EBEN C. INGERSOLL, 

REPBESENTATIVE FROM ILLINOIS 



uecoj\'stbtjctio:k. sor 



CHAPTER XIII. 

FIRST WORDS ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

Responsibility of the Republican Party — Its Power and Position — In- 
itiatory Step — Mr. Stevens steaks for Himself — Condition of the Reb- 
el States — Constitutional Authority under avhich Congress should act 
— Estoppel — What constitutes Congress-»-The First Duty — Basis of 
Representation — Duty on Exports — Two important Principles — Mr. 
Raymond's Theory — Rebel States still in the Union — Consequences 
OF THE Radical Theory — Conditions to be required — State Sover- 
eignty — Rebel Debt — Prohibition op Slavery — Two Policies con- 
trasted — Reply op Mr. Jenckes — Difference in Terms, not in Substance 
— Logic of the Conservatives leads to the Results of the Radicals. 

HAYING traced the progress tlirougli Congress of the great 
measures relating to civil rights and protection of the 
freedmen, it is now j)roper to go back to an earlier period 
in this legislative history, and trace what \vas said and done upon 
a subject which, more than any other, awakened the interest and 
solicitude of the American people — the subject of Reconstruction. 

The Republican party had a majority of more than one hun- 
dred in the House, and after all its losses, retained moje than two 
thirds of the Senate. As a consequence of this great preponder- 
ance of power, the party possessing it was justly held responsible 
for the manner in which the country should pass the important 
political crisis c )nsequent upon the termination of the war in the 
overthrow of the rebellion. 

It became an important, question for members of the Eepubli- 
can party in Congress to determine among themselves what line 
of policy they should pursue. 

The ajjpointment of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Recon- 
struction, was every-where regarded by the constituents of the 
majority as a most happy initiatory step. The whole country 
listened with eagerness to hear what words would be spoken in 



308 THE THIBTT-JflJ^TH COJVGEESS. 

Congress to give some clue to the course the committee would 
recommend. Words of no uncertain significance and weight were 
uttered at an early period in the session. 

On the 18th of December, a fortnight after the opening of the 
session, Mr. Stevens announced his opinions on reconstruction 
with great boldness and distinctness. At the same time, seeing 
himself much in advance of many of his party, and fearing lest 
his opinions might alarm the less resolute, he declared : " I do not 
profess to speak their sentiments, nor must they be held respon- 
sible for them." 

Mr. Stevens opened his speech with remarks on the condition 
of the rebel States. He said : " The President assumes, what no 
one doubts, that the late rebel States have lost their constitutional 
relations to the Union, &nd are incapable of representation in 
Congress, except by permission of the Government. It matters 
but little, with this admission, whether you call them States out 
of the Union, and now conquered territories, or assert that be- 
cause the Constitution forbids them to do what they did do, that 
they are, therefore, only dead as to all national and political action, 
and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into them 
the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former 
position. In other words, that they are not out of the Union, 
but are only dead carcasses lying within the Union. In either 
case, it is very plain that it requires the action of Congress to 
enable them to form a State government and send Representatives 
to Congress. Nobody, I believe, pretends that with their old 
constitutions and frames of government they can be permitted to 
claim their old rights under the Constitution. They have torn 
their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their founda- 
tions fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men can not 
raise themselves. Dead States can not restore their own existence 
' as it was.' Whose especial duty is it to do it ? In whom does 
the Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch 
of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe 
laws. Not in the Executive, for he only executes and can not 
make laws. Not in the commander-in-chief of the armies, for 
he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign 
legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law. 

" There is fortunately no difficulty in solving the question. 
There are two provisions in the Constitution, under one of which 



BECOJ\^STEUCTIOJf. 309 

the case must fall. The fourth article says : 'New States may be 
admitted by the Congress into this Union.' In my judgment, 
this is the controlling provision in this case. Unless the law 
of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two acknowl- 
edged belligerents severed their original compacts, and broke all 
the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the 
conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They 
must come in as new States or remain as conquered provinces. 
Congress — the Senate and House of Eepresentatives, with the 
concurrence of the President — is the only power that can act in 
the matter. But suppose, as some dreaming theorists imagine, 
that these States have never been out of the Union, but have 
only destroyed their State governments so as to be incapable of 
political action, then the fourth section of the fourth article ap- 
plies, which says, 'The United States shall guarantee to every 
State in this Union a republican form of government.' Who is 
the United States? Not the judiciary; not the President; but 
the sovereign power of the people, exercised through their Repre- 
sentatives in Congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. 
It means the political Government — the concurrent action of both 
branches of Congress and the Executive. The separate action of 
each amounts to nothing either in admitting new States or guar- 
anteeing republican governments to lapsed or outlawed States. 
Whence springs the preposterous idea that either the President, 
or the Senate, or the House of Representatives, acting separately, 
can determine the right of States to send members or Senators to 
the Congress of the Union ? " 

]VIr. Stevens then cited authorities to prove that "if the so- 
called Confederate States of America were an- independent bellig- 
erent, and were so acknowledged by the United States and by 
Europe, or had assumed and maintained an attitude which en- 
titled them to be considered and treated as a belligerent, then, 
during such time, they were precisely in the condition of a foreign 
nation with whom we were at w^ar ; nor need their independence 
as a nation be acknowledged by us to produce that effect." 

Having read from a number of authorities to support his posi- 
tion, Mr. Stevens continued : " After such clear and repeated 
decisions, it is something worse than ridiculous to hear men of 
respectable standing attempting to nullify the law of nations, and 
declare the Supreme Court of the United States in error, because, 



310 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

as the Constitution forbids it, tlie States could not go out of the 
Union in fact. A respectable gentleman was lately reciting this 
aro'umcnt, when he suddenly stopped and said : ' Did you hear of 
that atrocious nmrder committed in our town? A rebel delibe- 
rately murdered a Government official.' The person addressed 
said, ^I think you arc mistaken.' 'How so? I saw it myself 
' You are wrong ; no murder was or could be committed, for the 
law forbids it.' 

"The theory that the rebel States, for four years a separate 
power and without representation in Congress, were all the time 
here in the Union, is a good deal less ingenious and respectable 
than the metaphysics of Berkeley, which proved that neither the 
world nor any human being was in existence. If this theory 
were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven; but its effect is 
deeply injurious to the stability of the nation. I can not doubt 
that the late Confederate States are out of the Union to all in- 
tents and purposes for which the conqueror may choose so to con- 
sider them. 

Mr. Stevens further maintained that the rebel States should be 
adjudged out of the Union on the ground of estoppel. " They 
are estopped," said he, " both by matter of record and matter 
in iKils. One of the first resolutions passed by seceded South 
Carolina in January, 1861, is as follows : 

^'■Resolved, unanimousli/, That the separation of South Carolina from the 
Federal Union is final, and she has no further interest in the Constitution 
of the United States; and that the only appropriate negotiations between 
her and the Federal Government are as to their mutual relations as foreign 
States." 

" Similar resolutions appear upon all their State and Confed- 
erate Government records. The speeches of their members of 
Congress, their generals and executive officers, and the answers 
of their Government to our shameful suings for peace, went upon 
the defiant ground that no terms would be offi^rcd or received 
except upon the prior acknowledgment of the entire and per- 
manent independence of the Confederate States. After this, to 
deny that we have a right to treat them as a conquered bellig- 
erent, severed from the Union in fact, is not argument but mock- 
ery. Whether it be our interest to do so is the only question 
hereafter and more deliberately to be considered. 

" But sujipose these powerful but now subdued belligerents, in- 



REC0K8TRTJCTI0K. 311 

stead of being out of the Union, arc merely destroyed, and are 
now lying about, a dead corpse, or with animation so suspended 
as to be incapable of action, and wholly unable to heal them- 
selves by any unaided movements of their own. Then they may 
fall under the provision of the Constitution which says, "the 
United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a re- 
publican form of government." Under that power, can the judi- 
ciary, or the President, or the commander-in-chief of the army, 
or the Senate or House of Representatives, acting separately, 
restore them to life and readmit them into the Union ? I insist 
that if each acted separately, though the action of each was iden- 
tical with all the others, it would amount to nothing. Nothing 
but the joint action* of the two houses of Congress and the con- 
currence of the President could do it. If the Senate admitted 
their Senators, and the House their members, it would Iwive no 
effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth Congress 
might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress for 
the last four years." 

He cited a decision of the Supreme Court to show that "it 
rests with Congress to decide what government is the established 
one in a State," and then remarked : " But Congress does not 
mean the Senate, or the House of Representatives, and President, 
all acting severally. Their joint action constitutes Congress. 
Hence a law of Congress must be passed before any new State 
can be admitted or any dead ones revived. Until then, no mem- 
ber can be lawfully admitted into either house. Hence, it ap- 
pears with how little knowledge of constitutional law each branch 
is urged to admit members separately from these destroyed 
States. The provision that "each house shall be the judge of 
the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members," 
has not the most distant bearing on this question. Congress 
must create States and declare when they are entitled to be rep- 
resented. Then each house must judge whether the members 
presenting themselves from a recognized State possesses the requi- 
site qualifications of age, residence, and citizenship, and whether 
the election and returns are according to law. The houses sep- 
arately can judge of nothing else. 

" It is obvious from all this, that the first duty of Congress is 
to pass a law declaring the condition of these outside or defunct 
States, and providing proper civil government for them. Since 



312 THE THIRTT-MIJfTH COJfGBESS. 

the conquest, they have been governed by martial law. Military 
rule is necessarily desj)otic, and ought not to exist longer than is 
absolutely necessary. As there are no symptoms that the people 
of these provinces will be prepared to participate in constitutional 
government for some years, I know of no arrangement so proper 
for them as territorial government. There they can learn the 
principles of freedom and eat the fruit of foul rebellion. Under 
such governments, while electing members to the territorial leg- 
islatures, they will necessarily mingle with those to whom Con- 
gress shall extend the right of suffrage. In territories Congress 
fixes the qualifications of electors, and I know of no better 
place nor better occasion for the conquered rebels and the con- 
queror to practice justice to all men and accustom themselves to 
make and obey equal laws." 

Mr. Stevens proceeded to specify amendments to the Constitu- 
tion which should be made before the late rebel States " would be 
capable of acting in the Union." The first of those amendments 
would be to change the basis of representation among the States 
from federal numbers to actual voters. After explaining the 
operation of this amendment, he depicted the consequences of 
readmitting the Southern States without this guarantee. " With 
the basis unchanged," said he, " the eighty-three Southern mem- 
bers, with the Democrats that will in the best of times be elected 
from the North, will always give them the majority in Congress 
and in the Electoral College. They will, at the very first elec- 
tion, take possession of the White House and the halls of Con- 
gress. I need not depict the ruin that would follow. Assump- 
tion of the rebel debt or repudiation of the Federal debt would 
be sure to follow ; the oppression of the freedmen, the reamend- 
ment of their State constitutions, and the reestablishment of 
slavery would be the inevitable result." 

Mr. Stevens thus set forth the imjaortance of a proposed amend- 
ment to allow Congress to lay a duty on exports : " Its impor- 
tance can not well be overstated. It is very obvious that for 
many years the South will not pay much under our internal rev- 
enue laws. The only article on which we can raise any consid- 
erable amount is cotton. It Avill be grown largely at once. With 
ten cents a pound export duty, it would be furnished cheaper to 
foreign markets than they could obtain it from any other part 
of the world. The late war has shown that. Two million bales 



RECOJ^STRUCTIOJr. 313 

exported, at five liundrcd pounds to the bale, would yield $100,- 
000,000. This seems to be the chief revenue we shall ever derive 
from the South. Besides, it would be a protection to that amount 
to our domestic manufactures. Other proposed amendments — to 
make all laws uniform, to prohibit the assumption of the rebel 
debt — are of vital importance, and the only thing that can pre- 
vent the combined forces .of copperheads and secessionists from 
legislating against the interests of the Union whenever they may 
obtain an accidental majority. 

" But this is not all that we ought to do before these inveterate 
rebels are invited to participate in our legislation. We have 
turned, or are about to turn, loose four million slaves, without a 
hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The infernal 
laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, 
understanding the commonest laws of contract, or of managing 
the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound to provide 
for them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not 
furnish them with homesteads, and hedge them around with pro- 
tective laws; if we leave them to the legislation of their late 
masters, we had better have left them in bondage. Their condi- 
tion would be worse than that of our prisoners at Andersonville. 
If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we 
shall deserve and receive the execration of history and of all 
future ages. 

'^Two things are of vital importance: 1. So to establish a 
principle that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any 
of the amendments of the Constitution until they are duly ad- 
mitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their 
conqueror. For more than six months the amendment of the 
Constitution abolishing slavery has been ratified by the Legisla- 
tures of three-fourths of the States that acted on its passage by 
Congress, and which had Legislatures, or which were States ca- 
pable of acting, or required to act, on the question. 

" I take no account of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels, 
who, without any legal authority, have assembled in the capitals 
of the late rebel States and simulated legislative bodies. Nor do 
I regard with any respect the cunning by-play into which they 
deluded the Secretary of State by frequent telegraphic announce- 
ments that ' South Carolina had adopted the amendment,' ' Ala- 
bama has adopted the amendment, being the twenty-seventh State/ 



314 THE THIRTY-KINTH: COJfGBESS. 

etc. This was intended to delude the people and accustom Con- 
gress to hear repeated the names of these extinct States as if they 
were alive, when, in truth, they have now no more existence than 
the revolted cities of Latium, two-thirds of whose people were 
colonized, and their property confiscated, and their rights of citi- 
zenship withdrawn by conquering and avenging Rome." 

A second thing of vital importance to the stability of this re- 
public, Mr. Stevens asserted to be "that it should now be sol- 
emnly decided what power can revive, recreate, and reinstate these 
provinces into the family of States, and invest them with the 
rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should 
assert its sovereignty, and assume something of the dignity of a 
Roman senate. It is fortunate that the President invites Con- 
gress to take this manly attitude. After stating, with great 
frankness, in his able message, his theory — which, however, is 
found to be impracticable, and which, I believe, very few now 
consider tenable — he refers the whole matter to the judgment of 
Congress. If Congress should fail firmly and wisely to discharge 
that high duty, it is not the fault of the President." 

Mr. Stevens closed his speech by setting the seal of reprobation 
upon a doctrine which is becoming too fashionable, that "this is 
a white man's Government." He uttered a severe rebuke to 
those who thus " mislead and miseducate the public mind." 

There were some Republicans in Congress who disagreed with 
Mr. Stevens in his theory of the condition of the late rebel States, 
yet no one ventured immediately, to use a contemporary expression, 
" to take the Radical bull by the horns." 

At length, three days afterward, Mr. Raymond, as a represent- 
ative of the "Conservatives," ventured a reply. He thus set 
forth his theory as in opposition to that of Mr. Stevens : " I can 
not believe that these States have ever been out of the Union, or 
that they are now out of the Union. I can not believe that they 
ever have been, or are now, in any sense a separate power. If 
they were, sir, how and when did they become so? They were 
once States of this Union — that every one concedes; bound to 
the Union and made members of the Union by the Constitution 
of the United States. If they ever went out of the Union, it was 
at some specific time and by some specific . act. Was it by the 
ordinance of secession ? I think we all agree that an ordinance 
of secession passed by any State of this Union is simjily a nullity. 



EECOJ^STEUCTIOJV. ' 315 

because it encounters in its practical operation the Constitution 
of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land. It 
could have no legal, actual force or validity. It could not oper- 
ate to effect any actual change in the relations of the States adopt- 
ing it to the National Government, still less to accomplish the 
removal of that State from the sovereign jurisdiction of the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

" Well, sir, did the resolutions of. these States, the declarations 
of their officials, the speeches of members of their Legislatures, 
or the utterances of their press accomplish the result ? Certainly 
not. They could not possibly work any change whatever in the 
relations of these States to the General Government. All their 
ordinances and all their resolutions were simply declarations of a 
purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly 
could not date from the time when their intention to secede was 
first announced. After declaring that intention, they proceeded 
to carry it into effect. How? By war. By sustaining their 
purpose by arms against the force which the United States 
brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their 
arms victorious ? If they were, then their secession was an ac- 
complished fact; if not, it was nothing more than an abortive 
attempt, a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question 
of fact, and we all know what the fact is. They did not succeed. 
They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms ; in other 
words, they failed to secede. 

" But the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] insists 
that they did secede, and that this fact is not in the least affected 
by the other fact that the Constitution forbids secession. He says 
that the law forbids murder, but that murders are, nevertheless, 
committed. But there is no analogy between the two cases. If 
secession had been accomplished ; if these States had gone out, and 
overcome the armies that tried to prevent their going out, then 
the prohibition of the Constitution could not have altered the fact. 
In the case of murder the man is killed, and murder is thus com- 
mitted in spite of the law. The fact of killing is essential to the 
committal of the crime, and the fact of going out is essential to 
secession. But in this case there was no such fact. I think I 
need not argue any further the position that the rebel States have 
never for one moment, by any ordinances of secession, or by any 
successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful jurisdiction 



316 THE TUIRTY-KIKTR COJfGRESS. 

of the Constitution of the United States. They have interrupted 
for a time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdic- 
tion ; they rendered it impossible for a time for this Government 
to enforce obedience to its laws ; but there has never been an hour 
when this Government, or this Congress, or this House, or the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania himself, ever conceded that those 
States were beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws 
of the United States." 

Referring to the citation of authorities made by Mr. Stevens, 
Mr. Raymond maintained that they did not lend the "slightest 
countenance to the inference which was drawn from them." 

In rcj^ly to the theory maintained by Mr. Stevens, that States 
forfeited their State existence by the fact of rebellion, Mr. Ray- 
mond said: "I do not see how there can be any such forfeiture 
involved or implied. The individual citizens of those States 
went into the rebellion. They thereby incurred certain penalties 
under the laws and Constitution of the United States. What the 
States did was to endeavor to interpose their State authority 
between the individuals in rebellion and the Government of the 
United States, which assumed, and which would carry out the 
assumption, to declare those individuals traitors for their acts. 
The individuals in the States who were in rebellion, it seems to 
me, were the only parties who, under the Constitution and laws 
of the United States, could incur the penalties of treason. I 
know of no law, I know of nothing in the Constitution of the 
United States, I know of nothing in any recognized or established 
code of international law, which can punish a State as a State 
for any act it may perform. It is certain that our Constitution 
assumes nothing of the kind. It does not deal with States, ex- 
cept in one or two instances, such as elections of members of 
Congress and the election of electors of President and Vice- 
President. 

"Indeed, the main feature which distinguishes the Union un- 
der the Constitution from the old Confederation is this : that 
whereas the old Confederation did deal with States directly, 
making requisitions upon them for supplies and relying upon 
therOj for the execution of its laws, the Constitution of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect Union, made its laws 
binding on the individual citizens of the several States, whether 
living iu one State or in another. Congress, as the legislative 



RECOJ^STRUCTIOJ^. 317 

branch of this Government, enacts a law which shall be operative 
upon every individual within its jurisdiction. It is binding upon 
each individual citizen, and if he resists it by force, he is guilty 
of a crime, and is punished accordingly, any thing in the consti- 
tution or laws of his State to the contrary notwithstanding. But 
the States themselves are not touched by the laws of the United 
States or by the Constitution of the United States. A State can 
not be indicted; a State can not be tried; a State can not be 
hung for treason. The individuals in a State may be so tried 
and hung, but the State as an organization, as an organic mem- 
ber of the Union, still exists, whether its individual citizens com- 
mit treason or not." 

Mr. Raymond subsequently cited some of the consequences 
which he thought must follow the acceptance of the position as- 
sumed by Mr. Stevens. " If," said Mr. Raymond, " as he asserts, 
we have been waging war with an independent Power, with a 
separate nation, I can not see how we can talk of treason in con- 
nection with our recent conflict, or demand the execution of Davis 
or any body else as a traitor. Certainly if we were at war with 
any other foreign Power, we should not talk of the treason of 
those who were opposed to us in the field. If we were engaged 
in a war with France, and should take as prisoner the Emperor 
Napoleon, certainly we could not talk of him as a traitor or as 
liable to execution. I think that by adopting any such assump- 
tion as that of the honorable gentleman, we surrender the whole 
idea of treason and the punishment of traitors. I think, more- 
over, that we accept, virtually and practically, the doctrine of 
State sovereignty, the right of a State to withdraw from the 
Union, and to break up the Union at its own will Jiud pleasure. 

" Another of the consequences of this doctrine, as it seems to 
me, would be our inability to talk of loyal men in the South. 
Loyal to what? Loyal to a foreign, independent Power, as the 
United States would become under those circumstances? Cer- 
tainly not. Simply disloyal to their own Government, and de- 
serters, or whatever you may choose to call them, from that to 
which they would owe allegiance, to a foreign and independent 
State. 

"Now, there is another consequence of the doctrine which I 
shall not dwell upon, but simply suggest. If that confederacy 
was an independent Power, a separate nation, it had the right to 



318 THE THIRTr-JfIJ{TH COJfGRESS. 

contract debts; and we, having overthrown and conquered that 
independent Power, according to the theory of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania, would become the successors, the inheritors, 
of its debts and assets, and we must pay them." 

Mr. Raymond set forth his theory of the conditions and rela- 
tions of the late rebel States in the following language : " I cer- 
tainly do not think these States are to be dealt with by us as 
provinces — as simply so much territory — held to us by no other 
ties than those of conquest. I think we are to deal with them as 
States having State governments, still subject to the jurisdiction 
of the Constitution and laws of the United States, still under the 
constitutional control of the National Government; and that in 
our dealings with them we are to be guided and governed, not 
simply by our sovereign will and pleasure as conquerors, but by 
the restrictions and limitations of the Constitution of the United 
States, precisely as we are restrained and limited in our dealings 
with all other States of the American Union." 

In answer to the question how we are to deal with the late 
rebel States, Mr. Raymond remarked : " I think we have a full 
and perfect right to require certain conditions in the nature of 
guarantees for the future, and that right rests, primarily and 
technically, on the surrender we may and must require at their 
hands. The rebellion has been defeated. A defeat always im- 
plies a surrender, and, in a political sense, a surrender implies 
more than the transfer of the arms used on the field of battle. 
It implies, in the case of civil war, a surrender of the principles 
and doctrines, of all the weapons and agencies, by which the war 
has been carried on. The military surrender was made on the 
field of battle, to our generals, as the agents and representatives of 
the Commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States. 

" Now, there must be at the end of the war, a similar surrender 
on the political field of controversy. That surrender is due as an 
act of justice from the defeated party to the victorious party. It 
is due, also, and Ave have a right to exact it, as a guarantee for 
the future. Why do we demand the surrender of their arms by 
the vanquished in every battle? AVe do it that they may not 
renew the contest. Why do we seek, in this and all similar 
cases, a surrender of the principles for which they fought? It is 
that they may never again be made the basis of controversy and 
rebellion against the Government of the United States. 



RECOJ^'STRUCTIOJ^. 519 

"Now, what arc those principles which should be thus sur- 
rendered? The principle of State sovereignty is one of them. It 
was the corner-stone of the rebellion — at once its animating 
spirit and its fundamental basis. Deeply ingrained as it was in 
the Southern heart, it must be surrendered. The ordinances in 
which it was embodied must not only be repealed, the principle 
itself must be abandoned, and the ordinances, so far as this war 
is concerned, be declared null and void, and that declaration must 
be embodied in their fundamental constitutions." 

The speech was here interrupted by Mr. Bingham, who insisted 
that the adoption of the principle in the State constitutions w^ould 
not be sufficient guarantee. Adoption in the Constitution of the 
United States was essential to its permanent effective force. 

Mr. Raymond thought the Constitution of the United States as 
plain as possible in its declaration against the doctrine of State 
sovereignty. If any more explicit denial could be got into the 
Constitution, he would favor it. 

" Another thing," said Mr. Raymond, " to be surrendered by 
the defeated rebellion is the obligation to pay the rebel war debt. 
\ye have the right to require this repudiation of their debt, 
because the money represented by that debt was one of the 
weapons with which they carried on the war against the Govern- 
ment of the United States. 

"There is another thing which we have the right to require, 
and that is the prohibition of slavery. "We have the right to re- 
quire them to do this, not only in their State constitutions, but in 
the Constitution of the United States. And we have required it, 
and it has been conceded. They have also conceded that Congress 
may make such laws as may be requisite to carry that prohibition 
into effect, which includes such legislation as may be required to 
secure for them protection of their civil and personal rights — 
their ' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' " 

Mr. Sj)alding having inquired whether there was any limit to 
the right to make these requisitions, except the good judgment of 
Congress, Mr. Raymond answered: 

" ]\Iy impression is that these requisitions are made as a part 
of the terms of surrender which w^e have a right to demand at the 
hands of the defeated insurgents, and that it belongs, therefore, to 
the President, as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of 



320 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

the United States, to make them, and to fix the limit as to what 
they shall embrace." 

By "svay of setting forth the opinions of the " Radicals " in as 
stronc a light as possible, Mr. Raymond said : " It may be for the 
welfare of this nation that we shall cherish toward the millions 
of our people lately in rebellion feelings of hatred and distrust ; 
that we shall nurse the bitterness their infamous treason has 
naturally and justly engendered, and make that the basis of our 
future dealings with them. Possibly we may best teach them the 
lessons of liberty, by visiting upon them the worst excesses of des- 
potism. Possibly they may best learn to practice justice toward 
others, to admire and emulate our republican institutions, by suf- 
fering at our hands the absolute rule we denounce in others. It 
may be best for us and for them that we discard, in all our deal- 
ings with them, all the obligations and requirements of the Con- 
stitution, and assert as the only law for them the unrestrained 
will of conquerors and masters." 

In contrast with this, he placed what he supposed to be a dif- 
ferent policy : " I would exact from them, or impose upon them 
through the constitutional legislation of Congress, and by enlarg- 
ing and extending, if necessary, the scope and powers of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, proper care and protection for the helpless 
and friendless freedmen, so lately their slaves. I would exercise 
a rigid scrutiny into the character and loyalty of the men whom 
they may send to Congress, before I allowed them to participate 
in the high prerogative of legislating for the nation. But I 
would seek to allay rather than stimulate the animosities and 
hatred, however just they may be, to which the war has given 
rise. But for our own sake as well as for theirs, I would not 
visit upon them a policy of confiscation which has been discarded 
in the policy and practical conduct of every civilized nation on 
the face of the globe." 

Mr. Raymond having closed his speech, it was moved that the 
Committee of the Whole should rise, but the motion was with- 
drawn to allow ISIr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, five minutes for 
reply. He said: "The gentleman states, and properly, that 
every act or ordinance of secession was a nullity. Undoubtedly 
it was. Upon that question of law Ave do not disagree. But he 
seems to me to overlook entirely what was the state of facts from 
the time of the passage of the ordinances of secession until the 



RECOJiSTRUCTIOJf. 321 

time of the surrender of Lee's army. During that period what 
were the relations which all that territory — I will not use the 
term States, but all that territory — between the Potomac and the 
Rio Grande sustained to the Government of the United States? 
Who could see States there for any purpose for which legislation 
was required by the Constitution of the United States ? 

"At the time of the passage of the ordinance of secession, 
States were organized there, in existence, in action, known to the 
Constitution and the constitutional authorities under it. But 
were they loyal ? Did they obey the Constitution of the United 
States ? This is a question that needs no answer other than that 
which is conveyed to every mind by the recollection of the last 
four years of war, with their expenditure of treasure and blood. 
Those States were not destroyed, in the technical language of the 
law — they simply died out. As their Governors passed' out of 
office, as the terms of their legislatures expired, who knew those 
facts ? None but themselves. And yet, behind this grand cordon 
of armies, stretching from here to the Rio Grande, there were 
States in existence, organized as States, but States in rebellion, 
occupying the territory belonging to the people of the United 
States. They were not acting in concert with this Government, 
but against it. That, Mr. Chairman, is a matter of fact. My 
eyes are not dimmed or blinded by the parchment upon which 
constitutions or laws are written. I, like the men who carried 
the bayonets and planted the cannon, recognize the fact that was 
before us during all this time. There was a state of rebellion. 
There were in that part of our territory no States known to our 
Constitution or the laws that we enact, or the officers whose duty 
it is to enforce those laws. 

" I recognize, too, the next fact. Bear in mind, I am simply 
stating now what I conceive to be the facts. The question as to 
what may be the law can be reserved for discussion on another 
occasion. I recognize fully the duties of the Executive. And it 
was the duty of the President of the United States, as the head 
of the civil and military power of this great republic — not ' em- 
pire ;' God forbid that this country should ever be so designated 
with applause or even with toleration — to beat down armed oppo- 
sition to it, whether it came from a foreign power or from domes- 
tic insurrection. That was the duty of the President, and he 
recognized it; and it was not the duty of any one in this Con- 
21 



322 THE THIRTY-mJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

gress to gainsay it. It was written on the face of the Constitution 
that the President was to see that the laws should be faithfully 
executed, and the power of this republic maintained, and he 

did so. 

" The next fact — the fact which seems to me to be the one most 
pertinent for consideration now — is that the military power which 
was opposed to this Government has been destroyed. It was the 
duty of the Executive to see that this was done, and to report to 
the Congress of the United States that it has been done. But 
what then? Then there comes the third question of fact, inti- 
mately connected with the last, and hardly separable from it, be- 
cause it requires the immediate action of the Executive and of 
Congress. All the power that existed in the shape of Confede- 
rated States behind rebel bayonets and fortifications has fallen to 
the earth. The territory which these States in rebellion occu- 
pied was the property of the people of the United States, and 
never could be taken from us. I hold it to be a question of pub- 
lic law, worthy of consideration by the representatives of the 
American people, by the President and the Administration gene- 
rally, to ascertain what existed in the shape of civil constitutions 
and laws behind the military government that has been over- 
thrown. ' I hesitate not to say, here or elsewhere, that the Exec- 
utive of this Government has done his duty in this matter. All 
conquering nations, when they overcome a rebellious people by 
overthrowing their military power, look, as did the Government 
of Great Britain when it had overcome the mutiny in India, to 
see what government of a civil kind has existed or may exist 
from custom among the people who are conquered. I see no 
reason in this view to discriminate between the argument of the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania and the argument of the gentle- 
man from New York. It seems to me, that if they will look at 
the particular questions which are now before us, and which 
require our action, the differences would be in terms and not in 
substance." 

The people of the predominant party generally acquiesced in 
the opinion of Mr. Jenckes, as expressed in the conclusion of his 
remarks as above presented. They conceived that the difference 
between the various views of the whole question was " one of de- 
tails and not of essence." The question of reconstruction was 
purely practical. All shades of opinion in the Republican party 



RECOXSTRUCTIOjY. 323 

blended in this : that the States in question were not to be restored 
until satisfactory pledges were given to the United States. All 
speculation or attempt at argument in reference to their abstract 
condition was consequently superfluous — "a pernicious abstrac- 
tion," in the language of Mr. Lincoln. 

If some were not prepared to accept the deductions of Mr. Ste- 
vens, yet accepting the logic of Mr. Kaymond, they would be 
carried almost as far. The latter held that the citizens of those 
States were defeated insurgents wdio must submit to any condi- 
tions of surrender imposed by the victorious commander. Certain 
concessions could be rightfully demanded as parts of their sur- 
render and conditions of their restoration. Their acquiescence 
had been required in a constitutional amendment affecting the 
iireat social and industrial interests of Southern society. After 
this none could deny the right, whatever might be the expediencj?^ 
of requiring their .assent to other amendments bearing upon the 
political structure of the Southern States. 

Some of the predominant party were willing to stop short in 
their demands upon the rebel States with requiring acceptance of 
the emancipation amendment, repudiation of the rebel debt, legal 
protection of freedmen, and revocation of the ordinances of seces- 
sion. The majority, however, were disposed to go still further, 
and demand other conditions and guarantees which should be- 
come a part of the fundamental law of the land. This was the 
practical work of reconstruction for which the Joint Committee 
of Fifteen w^as preparing the way, and upon which Congress was 
soon to enter. 



324 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COiN'GRESS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION— IN THE HOUSE. 

FlKST "WORK OF THE JoiNT COMMITTEE — ThE JOINT KESOLUTION PROPOSING A 
CONSTITUTIONAL A5IENDMEXT — Mr. StEVENs' REASONS FOR SPEEDY ACTION — 

Protracted discussion commenced — Objections to the bill by Mr. 
EoGERS — Defense by Mr. Conkling — Two other modes — How States 

MIGHT evade the LaW — NOT A FINALITY — WISCONSIN AND SoUTH CARO- 
LINA — Amendment for Female Suffrage proposed — Orth on Indiana 
^ AND Massachusetts — Obscuration of the sun — More Radical remedy 
desired — A Kentuckian gratified— Citations from the Census — Pre- 
mium for Treason — White Slaves — Power to amend well-nigh ex- 
hausted — Objections to the Suffrage Basis — " Race" and "Color" am- 
biguous — Condition of the Question — Recommitted — Final passage. 

ALTHOUGH the Joint Committee of Fifteen were assiduous 
in their attention to the work assigned them, it was not 
until the 22d of January, 1866, that they were ready to 
make a partial report and recommend a practical measure for the 
consideration of Congress. 

On that day Mr. Fessenden, of the Senate, and Mr. Stevens, 
of the House of Representatives, brought before those bodies re- 
spectively a partial report from the committee, recommending the 
passage of the following joint resolution : 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring,) That 
the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as 
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified 
by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Con- 
stitution, namely : 

Article — . Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several^tates which may be included within this Union according to 
their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each 
State, excluding Indians not taxed: Provided, That whenever the elective 
franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or 
color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of 
representation. 



'BASIS 6>> REPRESEJfTATIOJf. 325 

In the Senate this subject was laid over, and was not reached 
for several days, as the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was then under 
discussion. 

The subject was pressed upon the attention of the House for 
immediate action. Mr. Stevens had no intention to make a 
speech, since the question had been under consideration by every 
member for the last six weeks. He remarked, however : " There 
are twenty-two States whose Legislatures are now in session, some 
of which will adjourn witliin two or three weeks. It is very de- 
sirable, if this amendment is to be adopted, that it should go forth 
to be acted upon by the Legislatures now in session. It proposes 
to change t!ie present basis of representation to a representation 
upon all persons, with the proviso that wherever any State excludes 
a particular class of persons from the elective franchise, that State 
to that extent shall not be entitled to be represented in Congress. 
It does not deny to the States the right to regulate the elective 
ftanchise as they please ; but it does say to a State, '■ If you ex- 
clude from the right of suffrage Frenchmen, Irishmen, or any par- 
ticular class of people, none of that class of persons shall be 
counted in fixing your representation in this House. You may 
allow them to vote or not, as you please ; but if you do allow 
them to vote, they will be counted and represented here ; while 
if you do not allow them to vote, no one shall be authorized to 
represent them here; they shall be excluded from the basis of 
representation.' " 

As indicative of the apparent harmony of sentiments prevailing 
on the question, Mr. Wilson said that the Committee on the 
Judiciary had determined to report a proposition substantially 
identical with that offered by Mr. Stevens. 

It was deemed important to have the joint resolution passed 
as soon as possible, tliat it might go before the State Legislatures 
then in session for their ratification before their adjournment. 
The member who had the measure in charge desired, after one or 
two speeches on either side, to have the question put to vote, and 
have the resolution passed before the sun went down. Such 
action, however, seemed to the House too hasty, and a discussion 
of the measure was entered upon, which ran through many days. 

Mr. Rogers, a member of the committee, offered a minority 
report, and addressed the House in opposition to the proposed 
amendment of the Constitution. He thus presented his view of 



326 THE THIBTr-J^i:N'TH tOjYGEESS. 

the object of the measure proposed : " It appears to have in its 
body, in its soul, and in its life only one great object and aim ; 
that is to debase and degrade the white race, and to place upon 
a hio-her footing than the "white men are placed, under the Con- 
stitution, this African race. It is a proposition to change the 
oro-anic law of the land Avith regard to one of the fundamental 
principles which was laid down by our fathers at the formation 
of the Constitution as an axiom of civil and political liberty, that 
taxation and representation should always go together. If gentle- 
men will examine this proposed amendment of the Constitution, 
they will see that it is in violation of that great doctrine which 
was proclaimed by the fathers of the" republic wheif they enun- 
ciated the Declaration of Independence, and protested against 
the tyranny and despotism of England, because she attempted to 
tax the people of the colonies without allowing them representa- 
tion in the councils of the kingdom. The amendment now under 
consideration proposes the very same identical thing that the 
Parliament of England proposed when it attempted to inflict 
upon the American colonies taxation without allowing the people 
of the colonies to have representatives in the Parliament of Eng- 
land to represent them u]5on the question whether they should be 
taxed by the mother country or not. 

" The first objection I have to the passage of this joint resolution 
is, that it is violative of the main principle upon which the Eevo- 
lutionary War was conducted, and which induced our fathers to 
enter the harbors of Boston and New York and throw the tea 
into the water. Because the British people attempted to inflict 
taxation upon them with regard to that tea, and refused to allow 
them representation in the Parliament of England, our fathers 
rebelled against their mother country. What has come over the 
fortunes and happiness of the people of this country that the 
great principle of the Constitution should now be violated, that 
princij)le for which our fathers spilt their blood to sustain, the 
great axiom of American liberty, that taxation never should be 
imposed upon a people unless that people have a corresponding 
representation? If this amendment to the Constitution should 
be carried into effect, it wall prevent any State, North or South, 
from allowing qualified sufli'age to its colored population, except 
ujMjn forfeiture of representation ; and if qualified suffrage should 
be allowed to the colored population of any State in this Union, 



'BASIS OF BEPBESEJ^TATIOJf. 327 

on account of race of color, and but one single negro should be 
deprived of his vote by failure to meet the requirements of the 
qualification imposed, that State ^vould be denied representation 
for the whole of that colored population — men, women, and 
children. 

" More than that : this bill attempts, in an indirect manner, to 
have passed upon, by the Legislatures of the different States, a 
question which the j^arty in power dare not boldly and openly 
meet before the people of this country, because there can be but 
one object lying at the foundation of this bill — an object which 
has been explained and expatiated upon in this House — and that 
object, as I have said, is, through the Federal power, to force the 
States to adopt unqualified negro suffrage, by holding over them 
the penalty of being deprived of representation according to 
population. 

"But I object to this joint resolution upon another ground — 
upon the same ground that I objected to the passage of the 
Negro Suffrage Bill for the District of Columbia — without con- 
sulting the people. It has been said in this country that all 
power emanates from the people. And I say that to submit 
this grave question to the consideration and decision of partisan 
Legislatures in the different States — Legislatures which were 
elected without any regard to this question — is violative of the 
great principles which lie at the foundations of the liberties of 
this country; that no organic law, affecting the whole people, 
should be passed before submitting it to the people for their rati- 
fication or rejection. Now this joint resolution proposes, simply 
to submit this amendment for ratification to the Legislatures of 
the different States. The Legislatures are not the States; the 
Legislatures are not the people in their sovereign capacity; Leg- 
islatures are not the source from which all power emanates. But 
the people, the sacred people, in the exercise of their sovereign 
power, either at the ballot-box or in conventions, are the only 
true and proper forum to which such grave and serious questions 
should be submitted. 

" I maintain that the Constitution of the United States, as it 
now exists, is not as liberal toward the Southern States, now that 
slavery has been abolished, as it was before the abolition of 
slavery. Why, sir, in the days -of the past, under our Constitu- 
tion, the Southern States have been allowed a representation for 



328 THE THIRTT-XIiN'TH COJVGEESS. 

a population that was not classed as citizens or people ; they were 
allowed a representation for people who had no political status in 
the State; persons who were not entitled even to exercise the 
rio-ht of coming into a court of civil justice as a plaintiif or 
defendant in the prosecution or defense of a suit. 

"Now, after the raging fires of war have swept from the 
domain of every State in the South the pernicious institution of 
slavery; after the result has been that every slave has received 
his freedom ; after the slaves have gained more by the success of 
this war than any other class of j)eople in the United States, white 
men, men who are the representatives of the white race, come 
here proposing to compel the States, on pain of being deprived of 
a portion of their rej)resentation, to allow all the negroes within 
their limits to vote, without regard to qualification or any thing 
else, while under the same jjrovision the State may, by its organic 
law, impose qualifications and conditions upon the exercise of the 
right of suffrage by the white population. The proposed amend- 
ment to the Constitution undertakes to consolidate the power in 
the Federal Government. It throws out a menace to the States, 
and the inevitable result of the passage w^ould be to induce every 
State in the Union to adopt unqualified negro suffrage, so as not 
to deprive them of the great and inestimable right of representa- 
tion for that class of population in the halls of the legislation of 
the United States." 

Mr. Conkling, also a member of the Reconstruction Committee, 
made an argument in favor of the proposed amendment : " Eman- 
cipation vitalizes only natural rights, not political rights. En- 
fi'anchisement alone carries with it political rights, and these 
emancipated millions are no more enfranchised now than when 
they were slaves. They never had political power. Their mas- 
ters had a fraction of power as masters. But there are no masters 
now. There are no slaves now. The whole relationship in which 
the power originated and existed is gone. Does this fraction of 
power still survive ? If it does, what shall become of it ? Where 
is it to go? 

"We are told the blacks are unfit to wield even a fraction of 
power, and must not have it. That answers the whole question. 
If the answer be true, it is the end of controversy. There is no 
place, logically, for this power to go, save to the blacks ; if they 
are unfit to have it, the power would not exist. It is a power 



BASIS OF EEPRESEKTATIOK. 329 

astray, without a rightful owner. It should be resumed by the 
whole nation at once. It should not exist; it docs not exist. 
This fractional jiower is extinct. 

" A moral eartlu|uakc has turned fractions into units, and units 
into ciphers. If a black man counts at all now, he counts five- 
fifths of a man, not three-fifths. Hcvolutions have no such frac- 
tions in their arithmetic; war and humanity join hands to blot 
them out. Four millions, therefore, and not three-fifths of four 
millions, are to be reckoned in here now, and all these four mill- 
ions are, and are to be, we are told, unfit for political existence. 

"Did the framers of the Constitution ever dream of this? 
Never, very clearly. Our fathers trusted to gradual and volun- 
tary emancipation, which would go hand in. hand with education 
and enfranchisement. They never peered into the bloody epoch 
when four million fetters would be at once melted oif in the fires 
of war. They never saw such a vision as we see. Four millions, 
each a Caspar Hauser, long shut up in darkness, and suddenly 
led out into the full flash of noon, and each, we are told, too 
blind to walk, politically. No one foresaw such an event, and so 
no provision was made for it. The three-fifths rule gave the 
slaveholding States, over and above all their just representation, 
eighteen Representatives beside, by the enumeration of 18G0. 

" The new situation will enable those States, when relationships 
are resumed, to claim twenty-eight Representatives beside their 
just proportion. Twenty-eight votes to be cast here and in the 
Electoral College for those held not fit to sit as jurors, not fit to 
testify in court, not fit to be plaintiff in a suit, not fit to approach 
the ballot-box ! Twenty-eight votes to be more or less controlled 
by those who once betrayed the Government, and for those so 
destitute, we are assured, of intelligent instinct as not to be fit 
for free agency ! 

" Shall all this be ? Shall four million beings count four mill- 
ions, in managing the affairs of the nation, who are pronounced 
by their fellow-beings unfit to participate in administering gov- 
ernment in the States where they live, or in tlifeir counties, towns, 
or precincts ; who are pronounced unworthy of the least and most 
paltry part in local political affairs? Shall one hundjed and 
twenty-seven thousand white people in New York cast but one 
vote in this House, and have none but one voice here, w^hile the 
same number of white people in Mississippi have three votes and 



330 THE TEIRTY-KIJ^TH CO.YGEESS. 

three voices? Shall the death of slavery add two-fifths to the 
entire power which slavery had when slavery was living ? Shall 
one white man have as much share in the Government as three 
other white men merely because he lives where blacks outnumber 
whites two to one ? Shall this inequality exist, and exist only 
in favor of those who without cause drenched the land with blood 
and covered it with mourning? Shall such be the reward of 
those who did the foulest and guiltiest act wbich crimsons the 
annals "of recorded time? JSTo, sir; not if I can help it." 

Two other modes of meeting the case had been considered by 
the committee, namely : First, To make the basis of representation 
in Congress and the Electoral College consist of sufficiently quali- 
fied voters alone ; Second, To deprive the States of the power to 
disqualify or discriminate politically on account of race or color. 

After presenting some reasons why the committee saw proper 
to recommend neither of these plans, Mr. Conkling further argued 
in favor of the proposed amendment : " It contains but one con- 
dition, and that rests upon a principle already imbedded in the 
Constitution, and as old as free government itself That prin- 
ciple I affirmed in the beginning; namely, that representation 
does not belong to those who have not political existence, but to 
those who have. The object of the amendment is to enforce this 
truth. It therefore provides that whenever any State finds 
within its borders a race of beings unfit for political existence, 
that race shall not be rejiresented in the Federal Government. 
Every State will be left free to extend or withhold the elective 
franchise on such terms as it pleases, and this without losing 
any thing in representation if the terms are impartial as to all. 
Qualifications of voters may be required of any kind — qualifica- 
tions of intelligence, of property, or of any sort whatever, and 
yet no loss of representation shall thereby be suffered. But 
whenever in any State, and so long as a race can be found which 
is so low, so bad, so ignorant, so stupid, that it is deemed neces- 
sary to exclude men from the right to vote merely because they 
belong to that race, in that case the race shall likewise be ex- 
cluded from the sum of Federal power to which the State is 
entitlecL If a race is so vile or worthless that to belong to it is 
alone cause of exclusion from political action, the race is not 
to be counted here in Congress." 

Mr. Conkling maintained that the j^cnding j^roposition com- 



BASIS OF REPRESEMTATIOJT. 331 

mended itself for many reasons. " First. It provides for repre- 
sentation coextensive with taxation. I say it provides for this ; 
it does not certainly secure it, but it enables every State to secure 
it. It does not, therefore, as the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Rogers] insists, violate the rule that representation should 
go with taxation. If a race in any State is kept unfit to vote, 
and fit only to drudge, the wealth created by its work ought to 
be taxed. Those who profit by such a system, or such a condition 
of things, ought to be taxed for it. Let them build churches and 
school-houses, and found newspapers, as New York and other 
States have done, and educate their people till they are fit to vote. 
'■ Fair play,' ' A fair day's wages for a fair day's work,' ' Live and 
let live' — these mottoes, if blazoned over the institutions of a 
State, will insure it against being cursed for any length of time 
with inhabitants so worthless that they arc fit only for beasts of 
burden. I have said that the amendment provides for repre- 
sentation going hand in hand with taxation. That is its first 
feature. 

" Sceond. It brings into the basis both sexes and all ages, and 
so it counteracts and avoids, as far as possible, the casual and 
geographical inequalities of population. 

" Third. It puts every State on an equal footing in the require- 
ment prescribed. 

"Fourth. It leaves every State unfettered to enumerate all its 
people for representation or not, just as it pleases. 

Thus every State has the sole control, free from all interference, 
of its own interests and concerns. No other State, nor the Gene- 
ral Government, can molest the people of any State on the sub- 
ject, or even inquire into their acts or their reasons, but all the 
States have equal rights. -If New York chooses to count her 
black population as political persons, she can do so. If she does 
not choose to do so, the matter is her own, and her rights can not 
be challenged. So of South Carolina. But South Carolina shall 
not say, ' True, we have less than three hundred thousand " per- 
sons" in this State, politically speaking, yet we will have, in 
governing the country, the power of seven hundred thousand 
persons.' 

" The amendment is common to all States and equal for all ; 
its operation will, of course, be practically only in the South. No 
Northern State will lose by it, whether the Southern States 



33^ THE TSIRTY'J^IJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

extend suffrage to blacks or not. Even New York, in her 
great population, has so few blacks that she could exclude them 
all from enumeration and it would make no difference in her 
representation. If the amendment is adopted, and suffrage re- 
mains confined as it is now, taking the census of 1860 as the 
foundation of the calculation, and the number of Eepresentatives 
as it then stood, the gains and losses would be these : Wisconsin, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, 
New Jersey, and Maine would gain one Eepresentative each, and 
New York would gain three ; Alabama, Kentucky, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Tennessee would each lose one ; Georgia, 
Louisiana, and Virginia would each lose two, and Mississippi 
would lose three." 

On the following day, January 23d, the proposed joint resolu- 
tion came up in the regular order of business. 

Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, feared that a construction might 
be put upon the bill which would be fatal to its efficiency for the 
purposes had in view by its friends. He said : " It says nothing 
about the qualification of property. Suppose this amendment is 
adopted by three-fourths of the States, and becomes a part of the 
fundamental law of the land, and after its adoption the State of 
South Carolina should reinstate the constitution of 1790, striking 
out the word ' white ' and reestablishing the property qualification 
of fifty acres of land, or town lots, or the payment of a tax, there 
would then be no discrimination of color in the State of South 
Carolina, yet the number of electors would not be enlarged five 
hundred, and the basis of representation Avould be exactly as it 
is, with the addition of two-fifths of the enfranchised freedmen. 
A Representative to this House would be reelected by the same 
voting constituency as now, perhaps with the addition of five 
hundred black men in the State. If it bears this construction, 
and I believe it does, I shall vote against it. 

"If any of the States should establish property qualification 
based upon lands, then the same oligarchy would be enthroned 
on the whole basis of representation, entitled to a larger number 
of Representatives than now in this House, and elected by a 
slightly enlarged number of qualified electors, giving power more 
firmly to that very aristocracy we have sought to overthrow." 

A number of queries were propounded, several amendments 
proposed, and a considerable desire for discussion expressed, until 



BASIS OF BEPBESEKTATIOX. 333 

Mr. Stevens, much disappointed at the reception the measure met 
in the House, withdrew the demand for the previous question, and 
left the subject open for unlimited debate. 

Mr. Blaine, of Maine, addressed the House, detailing some ob- 
jections to the measure. He said: "While I shall vote for 
the proposition, I shall do so with some reluctance unless it is 
amended, and I do not regret, therefore, that the previous ques- 
tion was not sustained. I am egotistic enough to believe that the 
phraseology of the original resolution, as introduced by me, was 
better than that employed in the pending amendment. The 
phrase ' civil or political rights or privileges,' which I employed, 
is broader and more comprehensive than the term ' elective fran- 
chise,' for I fear, with the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Farns- 
worth,] that under the latter phrase the most vicious evasions 
might be practiced. As that gentleman has well said, they might 
make suffrage depend on ownership of fifty acres of land, and then 
prohibit any negro holding real estate ; but no such mockery as 
this could be perpetrated under the provisions of the amendment 
as I originally submitted it." 

In relation to taxation^ Mr. Blaine remarked : " Now, I contend 
that ordinary fair play— and certainly we can afford fair play 
where it docs not cost any thing — calls for this, namely, that if 
we exclude them from the basis of representation they should be 
excluded from the basis of taxation. Ever since this Government 
was founded, taxation and representation have always gone hand 
in hand. If we shall exclude the principle in this amendment, 
we will be accused of a narrow, illiberal, mean-spirited, and 
money-grasping policy. More than that, we do not gain any 
thing by it. What kind of taxation is distributed according to 
representation? Direct taxation. Now, we do not have any di- 
rect taxation. There has been but twenty millions of direct tax- 
ation levied for the last fifty years. That tax was levied in 1861, 
and was not collected, but distributed among the States and held 
in the Treasury Department as an offset to the war claims of the 
States ; so that, as a matter of fact, we are putting an offensive 
discrimination in this proposition and gaining nothing by it ex- 
cept obloquy." 

Mr. Donnelly, of Minnesota, said : " It follows, as a logical con- 
clusion, that if men have no voice in the National Government, 
other men should not sit in this hall pretending to represent 



334 THE THIRTT-J^IJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

them. And it is equally clear that an oppressed race should not 
lend power to their oppressors, to be used in their name and for 
their destruction. It is a mockery to say that a man's agent shall 
be his enemy, and shall be appointed without his consent and 
against his desire, and by other enemies. 

" In fact, I can not see how any Northern man can vote against 
this measure, unless he wishes to perpetuate an injustice to his 
section, because the effect of it will clearly be to increase the re- 
presentation of the North and decrease that of the South ; and 
this, too, upon a basis of undoubted justice. It means simply 
that those who do not take part in the Government shall not be 
represented in the Government." 

Mr. Donnelly did not, however, regard the proposed amend- 
ment as "a grand panacea for all the ills that aifect. the nation." 
He would vote for the law, "not as a finality, but as a partial 
step as one of a series of necessary laws." Said he, " "When we 
vote for this measure, it must be because we think it right and 
necessary, not that it may furnish us with an excuse for failing 
to do all other right and necessary things expected of us by the 
people. Yf e must take direct, not sidelqng measures. We must 
make laws, not arguments. We must enforce, not induce. 

"To pass this law and then hope that South Carolina, moved 
by the hope of future power, would do justice to the negro, is ab- 
surd. She has 291,300 whites and 412,406 negroes. To pass 
such a law would be for the governing power to divest itself of 
the government and hand it over to a subject and despised caste, 
and that, too, for a faint hope of some future advantage that 
might never be realized under the most favorable circumstances, 
and certainly could never be realized by the aspiring class abdi- 
cating and relinquishing power. The same is true, more or less, 
of all the South. In Mississippi there are 353,901 whites, and 
436,631 negroes; and in all the States the negro vote would be 
large enough to turn the scale against the disloyal party." 

Mr. Sloan, of Wisconsin, thus presented the practical workings 
of the " Constitution as it is : " " Look at the practical operation 
of the question we are discussing to-day. In the State I repre- 
sent there are eight hundred thousand free white people loyal to 
the Constitution, who have done their whole duty in sustaining 
their Government during this terrible war. The bones of our 
soldiers are moldering in the soil of every rebel State. They 



BASIS OF RErBESE:N'TATIOJf. 335 

have stood around our flag in the deadly hail of every battle of 
the war. The State of Wisconsin has six Representatives on this 
floor. South Carolina has three hundred thousand white in- 
habitants, disloyal, who have done all in their power to over- 
throw aud destroy the Government, and yet, sir, under the Con- 
stitution as it now stands, the three hundred thousand disloyal 
white inhabitants of South Carolina will exercise as much polit- 
ical power in the Government as the eight hundred thousand 
loyal people of the State of Wisconsin." 

Mr. Sloan called attention to a proposition which he had sub- 
mitted to the preceding Congress, providing that the. right of 
representation should be based upon the right of suifrage — upon 
the numbers allowed the right to vote in the respective States. 

In answer to a supposed objection to this plan, that "there 
might be some inequality in the representation of the respective 
States," he said : " We all know that the young men of the old 
States go out in large numbers to settle in the new States and 
Territories, while the women and children do not emigrate to so 
great an extent, and hence there would be a larger number of 
voters in the new States in proportion to population than in the 
old. And yet this is a consideration which, in my judgment, 
ought not to weigh a hair with any member on this floor. It 
would be only a temporary inequality. In the rapidly increasing 
settlement and in the natural increase of population of our new 
States, that inequality would very soon be entirely swept away. 
I believe the difference to-day between Massachusetts and Wis- 
consin would be very slight, if any, so rapid has been the increase 
of our population and the settlement of our State. We are now 
proposing to adopt an amendment to the Constitution which we 
expect to stand for all time, and any temporary inequality which 
could continue but for a few years ought not to have any 
weight." 

]\Ir. Brooks, of New York, thought that Mr. Stevens would 
better " at the start have named what are States of this Union. 
The opinion of the honorable gentleman himself, that there 
are no States in this Union but those that are now represented 
upon this floor, I know full well ; but he knows as well that the 
President of the United States recognizes thirty -six States of this 
Union, and that it is necessary to obtain the consent of three- 
fourths of those thirty-six States, which number it is not possible 



t 
336 THE THIBTT-JflJ^TH COJVGRESS. 

to obtain. He knows very well that if his amendment should be 
adopted by the Legislatures of States enough, in his judgment, to 
carry it, before it could pass the tribunal of the Executive cham- 
ber it would be obliged to receive the assent of twenty-seven 
States in order to become an amendment to the Constitution." 

Mr. Brooks, in the course of his speech, presented a petition 
from certain ladies of New York, asking an amendment of the 
Constitution, prohibiting the several States from disfranchising 
any of their citizens on the ground of sex. He then proposed 
to amend the joint resolution by inserting the words "or sex" 
after the word " color," so that it would read, " Provided, That 
whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in 
any State on account of race or color or sex, all persons of such 
race or color or ^x shall be excluded from the basis of repre- 
sentation." 

" Is the gentleman in favor of that amendment ? " asked Mr. 
Stevens. 

" I am," replied Mr. Brooks, " if negroes are allowed to vote." 

"That does not answer my question," said Mr. Stevens. 

" I suggested that I would move it at a convenient time," said 
]\Ir. Brooks. 

"Is the gentleman in favor of his own amendment?" Mr. 
Stevens again asked. 

" I am in favor of my own color in preference to any other 
color, and I j)refer the white women of my country to the negro," 
was the response of Mr. Brooks, which was followed by apj^lause 
in the galleries. 

Mr. Orth, of Indiana, obtained the floor for the purpose of 
offering an anaendment, which he prefaced with the following 
remarks : " My position is that the true principle of representa- 
tion in Congress is that voters alone should form the basis, and 
that each voter should have equal political weight in our Govern- 
ment; that the voter in Massachusetts should have the same but 
no greater power than the voter in Indiana ; and that the voter 
in Indiana should have the same power, but no greater, than the 
voter in the State of South Carolina. The gentleman from 
Maine, however, states that the census tables will show that by 
the amendment which I desire to offer at this time you will cur- 
tail the representative power of the State of Massachusetts. And 
why? Because he has shown by his figures that although Mas- 



BASIS OF BEFRESEJ^TATIOK. 337 

sachusetts lias a male population of 529,244, licr voting popula- 
tion is only 175,487, being a percentage of twenty-nine, while 
Indiana, Avitli a white male population of 693,469, has a* voting 
population oi" 280,655, being about forty per cent. Why is this 
difference ? Is it because our voting population is so much greater 
in proportion than the voting population of INIassachusetts ? Not 
at all. The difference arises from the fact that the State of Mas- 
sachusetts has seen fit to exclude a portion of her citizens from 
the ballot-box. Indiana has done the same thing. Indiana has 
excluded one class of citizens; Massachusetts has excluded an- 
other class. Indiana has seen fit, for reasons best known to her- ■ 
self, to exclude the colored population from the right of suffrage; 
Massachusetts, on the contrary, has seen fit to exclude' from the 
ballot-box those of her citizens who can not read or write. While 
we in Indiana are governed by a prejudice of color, the people of 
Massachusetts, I might say, are governed by a prejudice as re- 
gards ignorance. But here is the difference : under the amend- 
ment that I propose, while Indiana excludes the black man from 
the right to participate in the decisions of the ballot-box, she does 
not ask that the black man shall be represented on this floor. 
On the contrary, while Massachusetts excludes black and white 
persons who can not read and write, she yet asks that that popu- 
lation excluded from the ballot shall have rejjresentation on this 
floor. I regard this as wrong in theory, w^'ong in principle, and 
injurious to the State which I have the honor to represent, giving 
to Massachusetts a power upon this floor of which my State is 
deprived.' Why ? Because the exclusion which drives from the 
ballot-box in Massachusetts a large portion of her citizens, yet 
admits them to representative power on this floor." 

Mr. Orth's amendment projDOsed that Representatives should 
" be apportioned among the several States according to the num- 
ber of iiiale citizens over twenty-one years of age, having the 
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch 
of the State Legislature." There being objection to the recep- 
tion of this amendment under the rules of the House, it could 
not be considered. 

Mr. Chanler, of New York, alluding to Mr. Stevens' desire 

to have the joint resolution j^assed on the day of its introduction, 

before the sun w^ent down, said : " Sir, this measure, if passed, 

will tend to obscure the sun from which the liberties of this 

22 



338 TEE TIIIRTY-KIKTH COjYGRESS. 

country derive their nourishment and life, the brilliant orb, the 
Constitution, whose light has spread itself to the farthest ends 
of the" earth. The vital principle of that Constitution, the soul 
of its being, is that balance of power between the -States which 
insures individual liberty to every citizen of each State, and har- 
mony among all the States of the Union. 

" I affirm, sir, that the discussion of this subject in the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1787 was conducted in a spirit worthy, 
of a great people, and resulted in the noble instrument under 
whose authority we now live. That era furnishes us a sad com- 
parison with the present epoch, when it may well be said that 
our Rome has * lost the breed of noble bloods,' and when, so 
far as the agitation of these fanatical and partisan questions is 
concerned, reason seems to have ^ fled to brutish beasts.' How 
differently and with what wise moderation did the framers of the 
Constitution act ! No narrow and fanatical partisanship marks 
their opinions or their acts." 

After reading an extract from Curtis' History of the Consti- 
tution, Mr. Chanler, contrasting former legislation with the pres- 
ent on the subject of suffrage, said : " From the above historical 
statement, it will be found that the framers of the Constitution 
considered the question of suffrage of so vital importance in fix- 
ing the balance of power between the States, that it was, after 
full discussion in Congress by the whole body, referred to a 
select committee of one from each State, again reported and fully 
discussed, and then referred to a committee of five, whose thor- 
ough examination of the subject gave rise to new difficulties, and 
caused the matter to be referred to another committee of one 
member from each State. All differences were compromised in 
a spirit of patriotism and justice. How different is all this from 
the hasty partisan legislation on this very suffrage question by 
the present Congress! 

" A caucus met before Congress organized, and chalked out a 
line of policy and action for the Republican party on the floor 
of Congress. The whole matter of reconstruction was referred to 
a grinding comroittee, whose dictation should govern Congress 
in every measure brought before it for consideration. Is this 
wise, just, or reasonable? I hold that this resolution is too nar- 
row to be of use and too weak to last. It will totter to an un- 
timely grave, and hobble, a feeble and contemptible instrument, 



BASIS OF REPRESE.YTATIOJ^. 339 

from this Congress to every State Legislature to whieh it may- 
be submitted, to be rejected for its feebleness in a time like this, 
amid the overwhelming issues which agitate this country." 

INlr. FarusVorth, of Illinois, remarked : " It is necessary, it 
seems to "me, that whatever constitutional provision we may make 
should be made clear, manifest, certain. If possible, we should 
make it enforce itself, so that by no cunningly-devised scheme 
or shift can they nullify it. It seems to me that the resolution 
reported by the joint Committee on Reconstruction is not so clear 
as it ought to be ; I am afraid that it will be worthless. A State 
may enact that a man shall not exercise the elective franchise 
except he can read and write, making that law apply equally to 
the whites and blacks, and then may 'also enact that a black man 
shall not learn to read and write, exclude him from their schools, 
and make it a penal offense to instruct or to teach him, and thus 
prevent his qualifying to exercise the elective franchise according 
to the State law. And they may do in regard to the elective fran- 
chise just what they are doing now in regard to slavery. They 
may provide that no man shall exercise the elective franchise 
who has been guilty of a crime, and then they may denounce 
these men as guilty of a crime for every little, imaginary, petty 
offense. They may declare that no man shall exercise the right 
of voting who has not a regular business or occupation by which 
he may obtain a livelihood, and then they may declare that the 
black man has no settled occupation and no business. It seems 
to me, therefore, necessary that we should, by some provision in 
this amendment, settle this beyond a peradventure, so that none 
of these shifts or devices may defeat the purpose of the enact- 
ment." 

Mr. Farns worth was in favor of more radical remedies : "I 
protest here that I will not accept any such constitutional amend- 
ment as this as a substitute for that full measure of justice which 
it is our duty to mete out. I will not promise that hereafter I will 
not propose, and vote for, and advocate with whatever power I 
possess, a measure which will give to all the people of the States 
that which is their due. By no vote of mine shall there be in- 
corporated in the Constitution a provision which shall, even by 
implication, declare that a State may disfranchise any portion of 
its citizens on account of race or color. We have no right to 
give .our countenance to any such injustice. All provisions in 



340 THE THIBTY-JflJ^TH 00,^0 BESK 

reference to representation wliieli are based upon any otlier prin- 
ciple than that of the people of this country, who are the subjects 
of government, have the right to vote and to be represented, are 
false in principle. Such a measure may, perhaps, 'answer for a 
temporary expedient, but it will not do as a fundamental rule to 
be embodied in the Constitution for the people of this country to . 
live by. I deny that a State has the right to disfranchise a 
majority or even a minority of its citizens because of class or 
race. And I say that that provision of the Constitution which 
makes it the duty of the General Government to ' guarantee to 
every State in this Union a republican form of government' 
ought to be taken into consideration by this Congress and en- 
forced. Does a State that denies the elective franchise to one-half 
of its citizens possess a republican form of government ? Where 
a large portion of the citizens of a State — the men who are re- 
quired to pay taxes and perform military duty, to contribute 
their money and their strength in support of the Government — 
are denied the elective franchise, is that a republican form of gov- 
ernment ? I say that it is a libel upon republicanism ; it is not 
a republican form of government; it is neither republican in 
form nor in substance." 

Mr. Baker, of Illinois, although anxious to have an amend- 
ment of the Constitution " achieving the general purpose of sup- 
plying a more just basis of reiwesentation," saw points of objection 
to the proposition before the House, some of which had been raised 
by previous speakers. He said : " I am reluctant to indorse an 
amendment to the Constitution framed in this day of growing 
liberty, framed by the party of progress, intended to make rep- 
resentative power in this Government correspond with the quan- 
tum of political justice on which it is based, and yet which leaves 
any State in the Union perfectly free to narrow her suffi-age to 
any extent she pleases, imposing proprietary and other disquali- 
fying tests, and still strengthening her aristocratic power in the 
Government by the full count of her disfranchised people, pro- 
vided only she steers clear of a test based on race or color." 

Mr. Jenckes was desirous of having a more just and compre- 
hensive enactment ihan the one proposed : " In my judgment," 
said he, "justice requires that the qualification of electors for 
members of this House and for electors of President and Vice- 
President of the United States— in other words, for the two. pop- 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOjY. 34I 

ular branches of this great Government — shouk^ be defined in the 
fundamental law. Upon this point let me quote the words of 
Madison, written in his mature years to a distinguished son of 
the republic seeking advice from him. He says: 'The right of 
suflrage, the rule of apportioning rci)resentation, and the mode 
of appointing to and removing from office, are fundamentals in 
a free government, and ought to be fixed by the Constitution.' 

"Certainly, sir, it is less difficult, in a Congress composed of 
less than three hundred men, to agree to a proposition which will 
meet the views of the whole country on this question of suffrage 
than to adopt a proposition which, when submitted to and adopted 
by the requisite number of States, must be carried into effect by 
as many Legislatures as there are States, and in a different man- 
ner by each, and which, in being carried into effect, must be acted 
upon by as many thousands of men in State conventions and Leg- 
islatures as there are hundreds in this Congress. 

"There is no equality, and there can be no equality, in the 
proposed amendment. It seems to me, therefore, if we under- 
take to amend the fundamental law at all in this respect, ^te 
ought to agree upon what should be the qualification of voters 
for members of this House, embodying them in the proposed 
amendments to submit to the Legislatures of the States. Then 
there would* be a definite proposition ; and that, I believe, if it 
emanated from this House, would have substantial equality and 
justice — would have the elements of equality and uniformity, 
and be enforced without difficulty in every State of the Union." 

Referring to a mode which might be adopted for evading the 
legitimate results of the proposed amendment, INIr. Jenckes re- 
marked : " I was alluding to another one. Some of the Southern 
States, up to the breaking out of the war, had constitutions which 
prescribed a property qualification. Suppose this ameni^ent were 
adopted, and the State of South Carolina chose to annul the Con- 
stitution recently proclaimed and to go back to that of 1790, and 
that the word ' wliite ' should be stricken out of it, I desire to 
ask how many freedmen, how many persons of African descent, 
can be found who own in fee fifty acres of land or a town lot, or 
who have paid a tax of three shillings sterling. As far as I can 
ascertain from the statistics, there would not be, if that constitu- 
tion were restored and the word 'white' omitted, over five hun- 
dred additional qualified voters in that State. 



84^ TEE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COJfGBESS. 

" Ever since the adoption of the Constitution of 1790 down to 
the time of firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina was in prac- 
tical relation to this Government as a State of this Union. She 
had been considered as having a rej)ublican form of government, 
and that which we had guaranteed as such for many years we 
would be bound to guarantee to her hereafter. Stronger than 
ever this oligarchy would be enthroned upon their old seat of 
powder, not ujjheld merely by slaves beneath it, but by the power 
of the General Government above and around it. She might 
make any of the discriminations w^iich I have suggested, of 
age, of residence, of previous servitude, and of ignorance or 
poverty." 

Mr. Trimble, of Kentucky, was " exceedingly gratified at the dis- 
position manifested among the party in opposition here, by reason 
of their own differences of opinion, to allow an opportunity to us 
to present our objections to the measure now under consideration. 
This subject of amending the Constitution under which we have 
lived so long, so happily, and so prosperously, is one of great 
moment; and while I have some confidence in the ability and 
capacity of some of the fi'ieuds on the opposite side to make a 
constitution, yet I prefer the Constitution as made by our fathers 
eighty years ago. 

"In my opinion, the amendment proposed is in violation of 
the reserved rights of the people of the States under that instru- 
ment. The object and purpose of this resolution • is to enfran- 
chise a million men in this country whom no political party in 
this country ever had the boldness to propose the enfranchisment 
of prior to the present session of Congress. I remember that, in 
1860 and 1861, the party known in this country as the Union 
party took the ground, from one end of the country to the other, 
that neithsr Congress nor the people of the States had the power, 
under the Constitution of the United States, to interfere with 
slavery in the States where it existed; much less, sir, did they 
claim the power not only to destroy it, but to strike down the 
provisions of the Constitution that protected me and my constitu- 
ents in our right to our property. Sir, there was an amendment 
submitted then for the purpose of peace, for the purpose of restoring 
peace and quiet throughout the country. It met, at the time, my 
hearty support, and I regret, from the bottom of my heart, that the 
people, North, South, East, and West, did not agree to that prop- 



BASIS OF REPEESENTATIOK. SJfS 

osition, and make it part and parcel of the Constitution. I refer 
to the amendment proposed in 1861, declaring that Congress 
should never thereafter interfere ^ith the question of slavery in 
the States. 

"Sir, it is a -well-established principle that no one should be 
permitted to take advantage of his own wrong. If the party in 
power have succeeded in freeing the slaves of the South, ought 
they not, at least, to allow the Soutliern States to enjoy the in- 
creased representation to which, according to the rule established 
by the Constitution, they are now entitled ? Or, if the Northern 
States sincerely desire that the negroes of the South shall vote 
and shall be represented in Congress, let them transport those 
negroes to the North and take them under their guardianship; 
they are welcome to them. 

" I believe that the people of Kentucky, whom I in part rep^, 
resent, and I have no doubt the people of the whole South, will 
submit in good faith to the constitutional amendment abolishing 
slavery. While they may believe th^ the amendment is revolu- 
tionary and unjust, in violation of the rights of Kentucky and 
the South, still the Southern States, having in a way yielded up 
this question, for representation and peace, they will stand by the 
Constitution as amended." ^ 

Finally, Mr. Trimble presented the following argument against 
the meo,sure : " This proposition is a direct attack upon the Pres- 
ident of the United States; it is a direct attack upon the doc- 
trines and principles taught by that distinguished man now hold- 
ing the presidential chair. This amendment is in violation, in 
my judgment, of every principle that that man has held from his 
boyhood up to the present hour. Sir, the President of the United 
States does not believe that the Congress of the United States has 
the right, or that the people have the right, to strike down the 
inalienable right of the States to settle for themselves who shall 
be clothed with that high privilege — suffrage." 

Tlie subject being resumed on the following day, January 24th, 
Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, addressed the House, premising his re- 
marks by a motion that the resolution and amendments be re- 
committed to the Committee on Reconstruction, "with instruc- 
tions to report an amendment to the Constitution which shall, 
first, apportion direct taxes among the States according to prop- 
erty in each ; and which shall, second, apportion Representatives 



344 THE TZriETT-J^'UfTir COJVGBESS. 

among the States on tlie basis of adult male voters who may be 
citizens of the United States." 

He argued that "the rule which gave representation to three- 
fifths of the slave population was wrong in principle, and unjust 
in practical results. It was purely arbitrary, the result of com- 
promise, and not of fixed political principles, or of any standard 
of abstract justice. If slavery was a just element of political 
strength, I know of no rule which could properly divide it into 
'fractional quantities;' if it was not a just element of political 
strength, I know of no rule which could properly give it ' frac- 
tional power.' 

" The basis of representation was unjust iu practical results, be- 
cause it gave to chattel slavery jjolitical power — a power accorded 
to no other species of property — thus making what the slave 
States regarded as wealth an element of political strength." 

After having given a statistical table showing how representa- 
tion was apportioned among the several States having free and 
slave population, Mr. Lawrence deduced the following facts : 
" New Hampshire^ with a white pojiulation of 325,579, has but 
three Representatives, while Louisiana, with a white population 
of 357,629, had five. California, with a white population of 
323,177, has but three Representatives, while Mississippi, with a 
similar population of 353,901, had five. In South Carolina 
72,847 white persons had one Representative, wdiile the ratio of 
representation is one for 127,000 persons. 

" Under this mode of apportionment, the late slave States had 
eighteen Representatives, by the census of 1860, more than their 
just share, if based on free population. The whole political 
power of Ohio was counterbalanced by slave representation. It 
was equal to two-thirds of all the representation from New Eng- 
land. In South Carolina 14,569 votes carried as much political 
power as 25,400 in the free States." 

Freedom having been given to the skves, " the effect will be, 
so soon as lawful State Governments are created in the reuel 
States, to largely increase their representation in Congress and the 
Electoral College. The slave population, by the census of 1860, 
was 3,950,531. Three-fifths of this, or 2,370,318, has heretofore, 
enteifed into the basis of representation. Now, the additional 
1,580,213 is to be added to that basis. This will give ten addi- 
tional Representatives to the late slave States — in all twenty-eight 



BASIS OF RErRESEJ^TATIOjY. 345 

more than their just proportion upon a basis excluding the hitc 
slaves. If this injustice can be tolerated and perpetuated, and 
the late rebel States shall soon be admitted to representation, 
they will enjoy as the reward of their perfidy and treason an in- 
creased political power. This will reward traitors with a liberal 
premium for treason." 

As to the proper time for amending the Constitution, Mr. 
Lawrence said : " But <f ever there could be a time for making 
fundamental changes in our organic law, and ingrafting on it irre- 
versible guarantees, that time is now. The events of the past 
four years demonstrate their necessity, and our security for the 
future imperatively demands them at our hands. The great 
events which have transpired, and the altered circumstances that 
surround us, admonish us that we will be recreant to our trusts if 
we fail to inscribe justice on the Constitution, and fortify it against 
the encroachments of treason, so that it shall be eternal. One of 
the elements of our past misfortunes, and Avhich gave power for 
evil to the enemies who assailed us in this temple, was unequa'i 
and unjust representation — political power wielded by a dominant 
class, augmented by concessions on behalf of a disfranchised and 
servile race, insultingly declared almost in the very citadel of na- 
tional justice as having no rights which a white man was bound 
to respect. By this amendment we strike down the iniquity o^ 
one class wielding political power for another, and arrogant be- 
cause in the exercise of unjust power." 

Maintaining that representation should be based upon suiFrage, 
Mr. Lawrence said : " The reason which conclusively justifies it is, 
that a people declared by law, if in fact unprepared for suiFrage, 
should not be represented as an element of power by those inter- 
ested in forever keeping them unprepared. But children never 
can be qualified and competent depositaries of political power, and, 
therefore, should not enter into the basis of representation. It 
never has been deemed necessary for the protection of females that 
they should be regarded as an element of political power, and 
hence they should not be an element of representation. If the 
necessity shall come, or if our sense of justice should so change 
as. to enfranchise adult females, it will be time enough then to 
make them a basis of representation." 

Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, though having "fifteen times as 
much respect for the opinions of the Committee on Reconstruc- 



34Q THE THIRTT'J^IJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

tion" as for his own, yet suggested the following as objections to 
their report : 

"1. It contemplates and provides for, and in that way, taken by 
itself, authorizes the States to wdiolly disfranchise entire races of 
its people, and that, too, whether that race be white or black, 
Saxon, Celtic, or Caucasian, and without regard to their numbers 
or proportion to the entire population of the State. 

" 2. It is a declaration made in the C»nstitution of the only 
great and free republic in the world, that it is permissible and 
right to deny to the races of men all their political rights, and 
that it is permissible to make them the hewers of wood and draw- 
ers of water, the mud-sills of society, provided only you do not ask 
to liave these disfranchised races rej)resented in that Government, 
provided you wholly ignore them in the State. The moral teach- 
ing of the clause offends the free and just spirit of the age, vio- 
lates the foundation princijiles of our own Government, and is 
intrinsically wrong. 

"3. The clause, by being inserted into the Constitution, and 
being made the companion of its other clauses, thereby construes 
and gives new meanings to those other clauses; and it thus lets 
down and spoils the free sjjirit and sense of the Constitution. 
Associated with that clause relating to the States being ^republi- 
can,' it makes it read thus : ' The United States shall guarantee 
to every State in this Union a republican form of government ; ' 
provided, however, that a government shall be deemed to be re- 
publican when whole races of its people are wholly disfranchised, 
unrepresented, and ignored. 

" 4. The report of the committee imposes no adequate restraint 
upon this disfranchisement of races and creation of oligarchies in 
the States, because after a race is disfranchised in a State it gives 
to one vote cast in such State by the ruling race just the same 
power as a vote has in a State where no one is disfranchised. 

" 5. These words of the amendment, to-wit, ' denied or abridged 
on account of color,' admit of dangerous construction, and also of 
an evasion of the avowed intent of the committee. Thus, for 
example, the African race may, in fact, be disfranchised in the 
States, and yet enumerated as part of the basis of representation, 
by means of a provision disfranchising all who were slaves, or all 
whose ancestors were slaves. 

" G. The pending proposition of the committee is a radical de- 



BASIS OF REPRESEiN'TATIOM. 3i7 

parture from the principles of representative republican govern- 
ment, in this, that it does not provide for nor secure tlie absolute 
political equality of the people, or, relatively, of the States. It 
docs not secure to each vote throughout the Government absolute 
equality in its governing force. It, for example, permits twenty- 
five thousand votes in New York city to elect two members of 
Congress, provided one-half of its population should happen to 
be foreigners unnaturalized, and not electors of the State, whom 
the law deems unfit to vote ; whereas, twenty-five thousand votes 
in Ohio would elect but one member of Congress, provided her 
citizens were all Americans instead of foreigners." 

Mr. Eliot submitted an amendment to the effect that popula- 
tion should be the basis of representation, and that ". the elective 
franchise shall not be denied or abridged in any State on account 
of race or color." He stated the following grounds of objection 
to the resolution offered by the committee : " First, the amend- 
ment as it is now reported from the committee is objectionable, 
to my mind, because it admits by implication that a State has 
the right to disfranchise large masses of .its citizens. No man 
can show that in that Constitution which the fathers made, and 
under which we have lived, the right is recognized in any State 
to disfranchise large masses of its citizens because of race. And 
I do not w^ant now, at this day, that the Congress of the United 
States, for the purpose of effecting a practical good, shall put 
into the Constitution of the land any language which would seem 
to recognize that right. 

" The next objection I have to the amendment is this : that it 
enables a State, consistently with its provisions, by making the 
right to vote depend upon a property qualification, to exclude 
large classes of men of both races. A State may legislate in such 
a way as to be, in fact, an oligarchy, and not a republican State. 
South Carolina may legislate so as to provide that no man shall 
have the right to vote unless he possesses an annual income of 
$1,000, and holds real estate to the amount of five hundred acres. 
Every one sees that that would exclude multitudes of all classes 
of citizens, making the State no longer republican, but oligarchical. 
Yet gentlemen say that under the Constitution Congress is bound to 
see to it that each State shall have a republican form of government. 
"The third objection I have to this amendment is, that it 
controls by implication that power ; because, while the Constitu- 



JJ5 THE THIBTY-JflJfTE CO J^' GUESS. 

tion now says that Congress shall guarantee to every State a 
republican -form of government, this amendment, as reported by 
the committee, admits by implication that, although a State may 
so legislate as to exclude these multitudes of men, not on account 
of race or color, but on account of property, yet, neverthelesSj she 
would have a republican form of government, and that Congress 
Mill not and ought not to interfere." 

Mr. Pike, of Maine, had, on the assembling of Congress after 
the holidays, offered a resolution expressing the idea contained in 
the report of the committee, but on reflection had come to the 
conclusion that the resolution would not accomplish the purpose 
desired. He stated his reasons for changing his opinion. He 
thought that the provisions of the proposed amendment might 
be evaded. " Suppose," said he, " this constitutional amendment 
in full force, and a State should provide that the right of suffrage 
should not be exercised by any person who had been a slave, 
or who was the descendant of a slave, whatever his race or color. 
I submit that it is a serious matter of doubt whether or not that 
simple provision would not be sufficient to defeat this constitu- 
tional amendment which we here so laboriously enact and submit 
to the States." 

Mr. Conkling thought that this criticism could have no prac- 
tical imj)ortance, from the fact that the proposed amendment was 
to operate in this country, where one race, and only one, has been 
held in servitude. 

Mr. Pike replied : " In no State in the South has slavery been 
confined to any one race. So far as I am acquainted with their 
statutes, in no State has slavery been confined to the African race. 
I know of no slav^ statute, and I have examined the matter -with 
some care, which says that Africans alone shall be slaves. So 
much for race. As to color, it was a common thing throughout 
the whole South to advertise runaway slaves as having light hair 
and blue eyes, and all the indications of the Caucasian race, and 
'passing themselves off for white men.' I say further to the 
honorable gentleman from New York, that well-authenticated 
instances exist in every slave State where men of Caucasian de- 
scent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been confined in slavery, and 
they and their posterity held as slaves; so that not only free 
blacks were found every-where, but white slaves also abounded." 

INIr. Kelley, who next addressed the House, also brought proof 



BASIS OF represe:n'tatiom. S49 

to controvert the " hasty assertion " that but one* race had been 
enshivcd : " The assertion that Avhite persofts have been sold into 
shivery does not depend on common report, but is proven by the 
reports of the superior courts of ahnost every Southern State. 
One poor German woman, who had arrived in our country at 
thirteen years of age, was released from slavery by the Supreme 
Court of Louisiana, but not until she had become the mother of 
three mulatto children, her owner having mated her with one of 
his darker slaves. Toward the close of the last century, the Su- 
preme Court of New Jersey decided that American Indians could 
be reduced to and legally held in slavery. And so long ago as 
1741 white slave women were so common in North Carolina, that 
the Legislature passed a law dooming to slavery the child of every 
' white servant woman ' born of an Indian father." 

Mr. Kelley thought that the enforcement of this long-dormant 
power of the Constitution would be for the benefit not merely of 
the poor, the ignorant, and the weak, but also of the wise, "the 
strong, and the wealthy of our country." " There is now pend- 
ing," said he, "before the Legislature of regenerated and, as 
gentlemen would have us believe, reconstructed Virginia, a bill 
to require five years' residence on the part of citizens of other 
States who may invest their capital and settle, within the sacred 
limits of the Old Dominion before they can acquire citizenship. 
If they may pass a limitation of five years, why may they not 
pass a limitation of fifty? Why will not any limitation that 
comes within the ordinary duration of human life be admissible ? " 

Mr. Bromwell, obtaining the floor, inquired whether the ques- 
tion w^as in such condition that any amendment or substitute 
could be offered. The Speaker replied: "Six amendments are 
pending now. The only one that could be offered would be to 
amend the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
[Mr. Stevens,] which was, to add the word ' therein ' in the fif- 
teenth line. No other amendment would be in order now, the 
whole legislative power to amend being exhausted." 

Mr. Bromwell had desired to offer an amendment which, in his 
opinion, would obviate many of the objections to pending joint 
resolution, and the amendments thereto ; but the way not being 
open for this, he addressed the House in a brief speech. He said : 
"When this amendment was introduced, on last Monday morn- 
ing, the differences of opinion which have been developed in 



350 TEE teirty-j<'i:n'tb: congress. 

reference to th"c principles of the amendment were not anticipated. 
But to-day we sec th'at it has, so far, not an advocate upon this 
floor. Such may be the result with every amendment which 
may be presented. It is difficult to see, among all the amend- 
ments which are now pending, any one of them, or any combina- 
tion of them, that will meet the desire of the majority, not to say 
two-thirds of this House. I apprehend that the members of this 
House desire to act so as to secure the support of a proper major- 
ity here. I apprehend, also, that they desire to make this amend- 
ment such that it will meet with the sanction of a sufficient 
number of the States of the Union to make it effectual. Now, 
sir, it is in vain for this Congress to launch an amendment which 
shall die on the road through the Legislatures." 

Notwithstanding the difficulties in the way of all the plans 
proposed, Mr. Bromwell Avas heartily in favor of modifying the 
basis of representation. " I think," said he, " seventy years is 
long enough for fifteen, twenty, or thirty Representatives to sit 
here and make laws to apply to Northern people, with no con- 
stituencies behind them. I think it has been seen long enough 
that a large number of persons called property, made property by 
the laws of the States, shall give to the oligarchs of those particu- 
lar districts of country the right to outvote the independent men 
of the North, of the free States, where some approximation has 
been made to securing God-given rights to all inhabitants. I 
think that it is wrong that the further a State recedes from com- 
mon right and common justice the more power the oligarchy 
which controls it shall grasp in their hands; and I desire that 
this amendment shall be made so that it shall bear down upon 
that abuse with the crushing power of three-fourths of the. legis- 
latures of the Union." 

After the House had heard so many objectors to the basis 
of representation, as proposed by the committee, Mr. 'Cook, of 
Illinois, took the floor in favor of the measure. He said: 
" We have now, as I believe, the golden opportunity to remedy 
this evil which will never come again to the men of this genera- 
tion. The system of slavery has fallen. The States whose repre- 
sentation was increased by it haVe, with two or three exceptions, 
destroyed their loyal aiid legal State governments, and now seek 
reconstruction. The adoption of this amendment by the States 
lately in rebellion should be one of the guarantees to be insisted 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOJf. 351 

upon as a condition precedent to their taking equal authority and 
rank in the Union with the loyal States." 

To the proposition that the basis of representation should be 
voters only, Mr. Cook presented the following olycctions : 

"1. It is difficult to enumerate voters accurately; their qualifi- 
cations arc fixed by State laws. We can not send Federal officer!? 
into every State to adjudicate, in disputed cases, the rights of 
those claiming to be voters under the State laws, as we should 
have to do. 

"2. It would not be just; the voters of the country are un- 
equally distributed. The old States have fewer, the new States 
more, voters according to the white population. In other words, 
there is a greater proportion of women and children in the old 
States. These should be and are represented. They are repre- 
sented, in the true sense of that word, by their fathers and broth- 
ers. The man who represents them does so really and practically, 
and not by legal fiction, like the man who represents ' three-fifths 
of all other persons.' 

" 3. It takes from the basis of representation all unnaturalized 
foreio^ners. I do not wash to discuss the question whether this 
w^ould be judicious or not, but I do not w\ant a measure of this 
almost supreme importance loaded down wdth these questions, and 
its passage jeopardized by the incorporation of provisions which 
would render it so liable to attack and misrepresentation." 

Mr. Cook referred as follows to some objections urged against 
the basis of representation proposed by the Reconstruction Com- 
mittee : " It is said that the Southern States may impose a prop- 
erty qualification, and so exclude the negroes, not on account of 
race or color, but for want of a property qualification, or that 
they might provide for a qualification of intelligence, and so dis- 
franchise the negroes because they could not read or write, and 
still enumerate them. To do this they must first repeal all the 
laws now denying suffrage to negroes ; and, second, provide quali- 
fications which will disfranchise half their* white voters ; two 
things neither of which will, in any human probability, occur. 
And in the event that it was possible that both these measures, 
should be adopted, and all the blacks and half the whites dis- 
qualified, it w^ould become a grave question whether the provision 
of the Constitution which requires the United States to guarantee 
to each State a republican form of government would not author- 



352 THE THIBTY-iN'IMTH CONGRESS. 

ize the Government to rectify so gross a wrong. There is no 
measure to which fanciful objections may not be urged ; but I be- 
lieve this to be the least objectionable of any measure which has 
been suggested to meet this evil. But above all, I am Well per- 
suaded that it is the only measure that can meet the approval of 
» three-fourths of the States; consequently, that this is the only 
practical measure before the House." 

Mr. INIarshall, of Illinois, declared the proposition, as reported 
by the committee, to be " wholly untenable, is monstrous, absurd; 
damnable in its provisions, a greater wrong and outrage on the 
black race than any thing that has ever been advocated by 
others." 

He thus set forth the measure in the light of injustice to the 
negro : " The gentlemen who rej)ort it profess to be, and doubt- 
less are, the peculiar advocates of the African race. I wish to 
ask them upon what principle of justice, upon what princijile of 
free government, they have provided that if,- after this amend- 
ment is adopted. South Carolina, Mississippi, or any other State 
shall adopt a provision that all white men over twenty-one years 
of age shall be voters, and all black men who have two hundred 
dollars' worth of property, and if there shall be ten thousand legal 
black voters in such State, upon what principle will you place in 
the Constitution of the United States a provision which would 
deprive these ten thousand legal black voters of any representa- 
tion upon the floor of Congress, or of being considered in the 
basis of representation ? And I wish to ask the honorable gen- 
tleman who reported this amendment if that is not the effect and 
result of the amendment reported from the committee." 

In reference to the time and place of inaugurating constitu- 
tional amendments, Mr. Marshall used the following language: 
"If any amendments are necessary to the Constitution of our 
country, this is not the time, and more especially is this not the 
place, to inaugurate such amendments. I believe, notwithstand- 
ing the conceded wisdom, ability, and virtue of this House, that 
the fathers who framed our glorious Constitution were wiser, bet- 
ter, and nobler than we are; yet every day we have offered here 
some dozen or twenty proposed amendments to the Constitution, 
offered as if we were discussing resolutions in a town meeting." 

Among the projiositions before the House relating to this sub- 
ject, was an amendment proposed by Mr. Schenck, of Ohio, pro- 




^'^'ir GEP.ru..: 





ROBERT C. SCHENCK, 



P:EPP.ESF.Mn''-""''T-- --•>^/ '""Hir. 



BASIS OF REPBESEMTATIOJ^. 353 

viding that representation should be based upon " the number of 
male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years of age, 
hnving the qualifications requisite for electors of the most nume- 
rous branch of the State legislature." 

Mr. Schenck addressed the House, and thus gave a history of 
his own connection with the measure : " At a very early day in 
this session, I wast)ne of those disposed to ask the attention of 
Congress to the subject, to propose in proper form the submission 
of the question to the Legislatures of the several States. On the 
first day of the sessio'n, on the 4th of December last, as soon as 
the House was organized, I gave notice that I would on the next, 
or some succeeding day, introduce a proposition to amend the 
Constitution. On the ensuing day I did accordingly present a 
joint resolution. It stands as House Resolution No. 1 of the ses- 
sion. 

" In that I propose representation hereafter shall be based upon 
suffrage. I propose tliat representation shall be apportioned among 
the several States of the Union according to the number of voters 
having qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous 
branch of the Legislature of the State where they reside, follow- 
ing in this the language of the Constitution ; these voters, how- 
ever, to be further limited in their descriptions and definitions as 
being male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years of 
age. Now, whether the proposition be a good one or not ; whether 
the limitation be such as should commend itself to the masses of 
our people, I will not for the present inquire. I w^ill only remark 
they have seemed to me to embrace as many qualifications as we 
ought to include when we are going to lay down a new organic 
law on this subject." 

An objection urged by Mr. Schenck against the plan proposed 
by the committee was, that it failed to offer inducements for a 
gradual enfranchisement of the negro. He said: "Now, sir, I 
am not one of those who entertain Utopian ideas in relation, not 
merely to the progress, but to the immediate change of sentiment, 
opinions, and practice among the people of those States that have 
so lately been slave States, and so recently in rebellion. I believe 
that, like all other people, their growth toward good and right and 
free institutions must necessarily be gradual ; and if we pass the 
amendment which I have proposed, or any thing similar to it, 
and say to them, ' You shall have representation proportioned to 
23 



So 4 TEE TEIRTY-KIKTH COjYGRESS. 

the portion of your population to "which you extend this inesti- 
mable franchise/ my belief is that they will not, on the next day 
after it becomes a part of the organic law of the United States, 
at once enfranchise all the negroes in their midst. I am not sure 
that they ought to do it ; but we are dealing Avith the matter now 
as it presents itself as a practical question. What will they prob- 
ably do ? My belief is, that if you persuade them to do right, 
if you hold out to them an inducement for letting their negroes 
vote, and striking out these disqualifications and putting all upon 
the basis of manhood, they will probably begin, after the amend- 
ment becomes part of the organic law, by extending this right to 
those who have acquired certain property ; perhaps they will also 
extend it, after awhile, to those who have certain qualifications of 
education. However they may proceed, whether rapidly or slowly, 
it will be a work of progress and a work of time. But by this 
amendment you would say to them, ' We do not want you to enter 
upon any such gradual bringing up of these people to the level 
plain of right to be enjoyed by them equally with others of other 
races in your midst.' We say to them, 'You may enfranchise 
one-third or one-fourth of your people who are black and de- 
prived of the j)rivilege of voting by introducing the qualification 
of property, up to which one-third or one-fourth may come ; you 
may introduce a qualification of education, up to which a number 
of them may come ; but that will all be of no value ; so long as 
there is any denial or any abridgement of the right to vote of a 
single man on account of his race or color, you shall have no 
part of the population of that race or color counted to measure 
to you your share of representation.' 

"Now, I will not go into the abstract question whether they 
ought to enfranchise the negroes at once or not; I will not go 
into the question of how soon they ought to do it as a matter of 
expediency ; I say that, in all human probability, when they come 
to enfranchise, if they do it at all, this portion of their popula- 
tion, they will do it gradually; yet, by this amendment, as it 
comes from the committee, you say that they shall not be repre- 
sented for any part of it at all till they completely enfranchise 
them and put them on the same footing with the white popula- 
tion." 

In conclusion, Mr. Schenck remarked : " New England, if she 
should even lose a vote, or two votes, or a fraction of a vote, can 



BASIS OF BEPRESEJfTATlOJf. 355 

not afford, any more than Ohio or Indiana, or any other of those 
States can, having these particular objections to the scheme, to let 
the opportunity go by now and not introduce a general amend- 
ment which" will remedy the one great evil under which we are 
all laboring together. I hold that Ohio must give up her objec- 
tions on account of her negro population ; that the North-western 
States must give up their objections on account of the fact that 
they are permitting persons to vote who are not yet citizens of 
the United States. Those persons would have to wait, Ho tarry 
at Jericho until their beards are grown.' I hold that New Eng- 
land must give up her objections; and, if we are to amend the 
organic law at all, we must do it by uniting upon a common 
principle, a conmion symjjathy, a common feeling, at least on this 
side of the House, upon which the entire responsibility is thrown, 
acting harmoniously, and adopting such an amendment to the 
organic law as shall be entirely democratic and fair in all its 
scope and action upon all the people of the States of this Union." 

The discussion was continued on the day following, Mr. El- 
dridge, of Wisconsin, having the floor for the first speech. After 
having expressed his satisfaction that the sun wjis allowed to go 
down on the deliberations upon this resolution, he confessed him- 
self opposed to the amendment of the Constitution. He said : " I 
believe that this is not the time for its amendment, and I believe, 
further, that there are other States than those represented upon 
this floor which are entitled to deliberate with us on that ques- 
tion, and to that point I shall mainly address the remarks which 
I have to make at this time." % 

He made a protracted speech on the general subject of recon- 
struction. At the close of his remarks, he said : " It would 
much more comport with the dignity and sense of justice of the 
American Congress to let the legally elected members from the 
Southern States be admitted, and participate in the proceedings 
and debates, especially in matters of so great importance as a 
change in our organic law. Let us have a representation for our 
whole country. Wherever the American flag floats, from the St. 
Lawrence to the Gulf of INIexico — wherever the Star-spangled 
Banner waves — that is our country. And let us legislate as 
Americans, as Representatives of our whole country, in a spirit 
of justice, liberality, and patriotism, and we will again have one 
country." 



366 THE TIIIBTY-J{IjYTE COjYGBESS. 

Mr. Higby, of California, was opposed to the joint resolution 
from the fact that the proviso in the proposed amendment is in 
conflict with that portion of the Constitution which requires that 
"the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union 
a» republican form of government." " I say it/' said he, " with- 
out fear or favor, that that amendment will allow any State 
government in its organization to exclude one-half of its popu- 
lation from the right of suffrage; and I say su«li State govern- 
ments will not be republican in form." 

In a conversation which ensued with some members, Mr. Higby 
maintained that no State excluding any class of citizens on account 
of race or color was republican in form. " I do not believe," said 
he, " there is a single State in the Union, except it may be one 
of the New England States, w^hich is an exception to that gen- 
eral rule." 

Mr. Hill, of Indiana, asked whether the gentleman would 
favor the House with his opinion as to what would be a repub- 
lican fojrm of government. 

Mr. Higby was sorry that the gentleman had lived to his time 
of life, and obtained a position as the Representative of a large 
constituency, without finding out what a republican form of 
government is. " I will ask the gentleman," said he, " if he 
thinks that those States that have excluded and disfranchised 
more than half of their native population have a republican form 
of government ? " 

"In my opinion," said Mr. Hill, "when the framers of the 
Constitution placed in thaljlinstrument the declaration or the pro- 
vision that the Government of the United States would guarantee 
to each State a republican form of government, they spoke with 
reference to such governments as then existed, and such as those 
same framers recognized for a long time afterward as republican 
governments." 

" Well, that is a very good answer," said Mr. Higby. " It is 
an answer from a stand-point seventy-five years ago. I speak 
from the stand-point of the present time." 

Mr. Higby desired that the joint resolution should go back to 
the committee. He said : " I do not wish it disposed of here, to 
be voted down. I want, if it is possible, tliat it shall be so framed 
that it shall receive the full constitutional majority required, and 
be a proposition that shall operate with full force in all those 



BASIS OF RETRESENTATIOK. 357 

States that now have a great population excluded from the rights 
of citizenship," 

"If the gentleman proposes," said Mr. Stevens, "to send it 
back to the committee without instructions, I would ask him what 
we are to do. There are not quite as many views upon this flooi 
as there are members; but the number lacks very little of it. 
And how are we to gather up all those views spread through all 
this discussion, and accommodate all, when each view would now 
probably receive from one to three votes in its favor?" 

" I have only this to say," replied INIr. Higby : " with my views 
of the Constitution, I never can vote for this proposition with this 
proviso in its present language. I say that it gives a power to the 
States to make governments that are not republican in form." 

"I say to my ffiend," said Mr. Stevens, " that if I thought, that 
by any fair construction of language, such an interpretation could 
be given as he gives, I would vote against it myself; but I do 
not believe there is any thing in that objection." 

Mr. Bingham took the floor in favor of the proposed joint resolu- 
tion. In "giving this and other amendments to 'the Constitution? 
my support," said he, " I do not subject myself to the gratuitous 
imputation of a want of reverence either for the Constitution or its 
illustrious founders. I beg leave, at all events, to say, with all 
possible respect for that gentleman, that I do. not recognize the 
right of any man upon this floor, w^io was a representative of that 
party which denied the right to defend the Constitution of his 
country by arms against armed rebellion, to become my accuser. 

"In seeking to amend, not to mar, the Constitution of the 
United States, we ought to have regard to every express or implied 
limitation upon our powder imposed by that great instrument. 
When gentlemen object to amending the Constitution, when they 
talk sneeriugly about tinkering with the Constitution, they do not 
remember that it is one of the express provisions of that instru- 
ment that Congress shall have power to propose amendments to the 
Legislatures of the several States. Do gentlemen mean, by the 
logic to which w^e have listened for the past five days on this sub- 
ject of our right to amend, that w^e are not to add any thing to 
the Constitution, and that we are to take nothing from it ? I pre- 
fer to follow, in this supreme hour of the nation's trial, the lead 
of a wiser and nobler spirit, who, by common consent, was called^ 
while he lived, ' the Father of his Country,' and, now that he is 



358 THE TEIRTY-J^INTR CONGRESS. 

dead, is still reverenced as ' the Father of his Country/ and to be 
hailed, I trust, by the millions of the future who are to people 
this land of ours as ' the Father of his Country.' In his Farewell 
Address, his last official utterance, AVashington used these signifi- 
cant words, which I repeat to-day for the consideration of gentle- 
men : " The basis of our political systems is the right of the people 
to make and to alter their constitutions of government.' We pro- 
pose, sir, simply to act in accordance with this suggestion of 
Washington. We propose, in presenting these amendments, to 
alter, in so far as the changed condition of the country requires, 
the fundamental law, in order to secure the safety of the republic 
and furnish better guarantees in the future for the rights of each 
and all. 

" The question that underlies this controversy is this : whether 
we will stand by the Constitution in its original intent and spirit, 
or, like cravens, abandon it. I assert it here to-day, without fear 
of contradiction, that the -amendment pending before this House 
is an amendment conforming exactly to the spirit of the Constitu- 
ixon, and according to the declared intent of its framers. 

" My friend from California [Mr. Higby] has informed us that 
there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the 
United States in the State of Mississippi to-day than there are 
of white citizens ; .that there are one hundred thousand more free 
colored citizens of the United States in South Carolina than there 
are of white citizens ; and then we are gravely told that we must 
not press this amendment, because we are abandoning the Consti- 
tution and the intent of our fathers. That is a new discovery, 
one for which the Democracy ought to take out letters patent, 
that it was ever intended that a minority of free citizens should 
disfranchise the majo^-ity of free male citizens, of full age, in any 
State of the Union ! For myself, I will never consent to it." 

In answer to the objection that the proviso in the proposed 
amendment seemed to acknowledge the right to deny or abridge 
the elective franchise on account of race or color, ISIr. Bingham 
sai,d : " I beg the gentleman to consider that a grant of power by 
implication can not be raised by a law which only imposes a 
penalty, and nothing but a penalty, for a non-performance of a 
duty or the violation of a right. Within the last hundred years, 
in no country where the common law obtains, I venture to say, 
has any implication of a grant of power ever been held to be 



BASIS OF EEPEESEJ^TATIOJV. 359 

raised by such a law, and especially an implied power, to do an 
act' expressly prohibited by i\\c same law. The guarantee of 
your Constitution, tliat the people shall elect their Representa- 
tives in the several States, can not be set aside or impaired by 
inserting in your Constitution, as a penalty for disregarding it, 
the provision that the majority of a State that denies the equal 
rights of i\\% minority shall suffer a loss of political power. 

" I have endeavored to show that the words of the Constitu- 
tion, the people of Hhe States shall choose their Eepresenta- 
tives/ is an express guarantee that a majority of the free male 
citizens of the United States in every State of this Union, being 
of full age, shall, have the political power subject to the equal 
right of suffrage in the minority of free male citizens of full age. 
There is a further guarantee in the Constitution of a republican 
form of government to every State, which I take to mean that 
the majority of the free male citizens in every State shall have 
the political power. I submit to my friend that this proviso is 
nothing but a penalty for a violation on the part of the people 
of any State of the political right or franchise guaranteed by the 
Constitution to their free male fellow-citizens of full age. 

" The iruarantee in the first article of the second section of the 
Constitution, rightly interpreted, is, as I claim, this: that the 
majority of the male citizens of the United States, of full age, in 
each State, shall forever exercise the political power of the State 
with this limitation : that they shall never by caste legislation im- 
pose disabilities upon one class of free male citizens to the denial 
or abridgement of equal rights. The further provision is, that 
the United States shall guarantee to each State a republican 
form of government, which means that the majority of male cit- 
izens, of full age, in each State, shall govern, not, however, in 
violation of the Constitution of the United States or of the rights 
of the minority." 

In closing his address, Mr. Bingham said : " I pray gentlemen 
to consider long before they reject this proviso. It may not be 
the best that the wisest head in this House can conceive of, but I 
ask gentlemen to consider that the rule of statesmanship is to 
take the best attainable essential good which is at our command. 
The reason why I support the proposed amendment is, that I 
believe it essential and attainable. I do not dare to say that it 
could not be improved. I do dare to say that it is in aid of the 



360 TEE TEIBTT-MIMTH COMGBESS. 

existino- grants and guarantees of the Constitution of my country, 
that it is simply a penalty to be inflicted upon the States for 
a specific disregard in the future of those wise and just and 
humane grants 'to the people' to elect their Kepresentatives 
and maintain a republican government in each State. 

" I^Ir, Speaker, the republic is great ; it is great in its domain, 
equal in extent to continental Europe, abounding in ♦productions 
of every zone, broad enough and fertile enough to furnish bread 
and homes to three hundred million freemen. The republic is 
great in the intelligence, thrift, industry, energy, virtue, and valor 
of its unconquered and unconquerable children, and great in its 
matchless, wise, and beneficent Constitution. I pray the Con- 
gress of the United States to propose to the people all needful 
amendments to the Constitution, that by their sovereign act they 
may crown the republic for all time with the greatness of 
justice." 

Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, presented an objection to the 
resolution which had not been alluded to by any gentleman on 
the floor. He said : " The resolution provides that whenever the 
elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State, on 
account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be 
excluded from the basis of representation. Now, there is a great 
deal of indefiniteness in both those terms, 'race' and'' color.' 

"What is a race of men? Writers upon the subject of races 
differ very materially on this point. Some of them would make 
four or five races; others fifteen; and one, whom I might name, 
seems inclined not to limit the number short of a thousand. I 
myself am incHned to think that the Celtic race is a distinct one 
from ours. I think that any gentleman who has studied this 
subject attentively will at least have doubts whether or not the 
race that appears to have inhabited Europe in the early historic 
period, and has been partly dispossessed there by ours, is not a 
distinct race from ours. 

" Again : the word ' color ' is exceedingly indefinite. If we 
had a constitutional standard of color, that of sole-leather, for 
example, by which to test the State laws upon this subject, there 
might be less danger in incorporating this provision in the Con- 
stitution. But the term ' color ' is nowhere defined in the Con- 
stitution or the law. We apply the term to persons who ar.e of 
African descent, whether their color is whiter or darker than ours. 



BASIS OF REPRESEiN'TATIOM. 861 

Every one who is familiar with the ethnological condition of 
things here in the United States, and who sees the general mix- 
ing np of colors, particularly in the Democratic portion of the 
country — I allude to that portion south of Mason and Dixon's 
line — must say with me that the word ' color ' has no very dis- 
tinct meaning when applied to the difi'ercnt peoples of the United 
States of America." 

Two Representatives from New York — Mr. Davis and Mr. 
Ward — expressed opinions favorable to a modification of the basis 
of representation, and yet were opposed to the details of the 
proposition before the House. 

Mr. Nicholson, of Delaware, in emphatic terms, denounced the 
acts of a majority of the House in attempting to amend the Con- 
stitution. " If they shall finally triumph," said he, " in the mad 
schemes in which they are engaged, they will succeed in convert- 
ing that heretofore sacred instrument, reverenced and obeyed till 
the present dominant party camfe into power, from a bond of 
union to a galling yoke of oppression — a thing to be loathed and 
despised." 

The discussion was still much protracted. Many members had 
an opportunity of presenting their views and Opinions without 
adding much to the arguments for or against the measure. The 
power of debate, as well as " the power of amendment," seemed to 
have exhausted itself, and yet gentlemen continued to swell the 
volume of both through several days. 

On Friday, January.26th, Mr. Harding, of Kentucky, made a 
violent political speech, ostensibly in opposition to the measure 
before the House. The following is an extract from his remarks : 

" The Republican party have manufactured a large amount of 
capital out of the negro question. First they began with caution, 
now they draw on it as if they thought it as inexhaustible as were 
the widow's barrel of meal and cruse of oil. The fact that the 
negro question has continued so long has been owing to the great 
care with which the Republican party has managed it." 

Mr. McKee, of Kentucky, followed. Referring to his colleague 
who had preceded him, he said : " I regret extremely that he has 
pursued the same hue of policy that gentlemen belonging to the 
same political party have pursued, ever since the idea took posses- 
sion of the Government that the negro was to be a freeman. His 
whole speech has been made up of the negro and nothing else. 



362 ■ TEE THIRTY-J^IIN'TH COJTGBESS. 

" I would like it if the amendment could go a little beyond 
what it does. I would like so to amend the Constitution that no 
man who had raised his hand against the flag should ever be al- 
lowed to participate in any of the afiairs of this Government. 
But it is not probable that we can go that far. Let us go just 
as far as we can. 

"■ Gentlemen say that they are not willing to vote for an amend- 
ment that strikes oif a part of the representation of the States; 
they are not willing to vote for an amendment that lessens Ken- 
tucky's representation upon this floor. The whole course of my 
colleague's remarks on this point is as the course of his party — 
and I may say of the loyal party in Kentucky — has been through 
a great part of the war, that Kentucky is the nation, and the 
United States a secondary appendage to her." 

Mr, Kerr, of Indiana, did not desire to be heard at length upon 
the main question before the House, but upon some questions in- 
cidentally connected wath it. He then proceeded to discuss the 
question whether Congress has " the power so to regulate the suf- 
frage as to give the right of suffrage to every male citizen of the 
country of twenty-one years of age." " I propose now," said he, 
"for a few moments, to examine this question with a somewhat 
extensive reference to the history of the Constitution in this con- 
nection, and if possible to arrive at a conclusion whether the 
honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania has given greater atten- 
tion to the history of this question than the President, and 
whether the conclusion which he has reached is a safer one for 
the country, or more in harmony with the history and true intent 
of the Constitution, than that of the President." 

Kear the close of his remarks, referring to the measure before 
the House, Mr. Kerr remarked : " I can see but one single clear 
result that will follow from this amendment if it is adopted by 
the people of this country, and that is an effect that will inure 
not to the advantage of the nation, nor of any State in the Union, 
nor of any class or race of men in any State ; but it wull inure 
solely to the benefit and advantage of the Republican party. In 
my judgment, the only persons who will gain by this provision 
will be the now dominant party in this country. They will 
thereby increase their power; they will thereby degrade the 
South ; they will reduce her representation here, and relatively 
increase their own representation ; they will confirm the sectional 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOJf. 363 

supremacy of the North in the legisUition and administration of 
the Government. They may thus compel the South to become 
suppliants at their feet for justice, and it may be for mercy." 

Mr. Kasson, of Iowa, and Mr. Wright, of New Jersey, made 
extended remarks, avowedly in o})position to the measure, but 
dwelling, for the greater portion of their time, upon subjects re- 
motely connected with the resolution before the House. 

Discussion was resumed in the House on Monday, January 
29th. The question having become nmch complicated by the 
numerous propositions to amend, the Speaker, by request of Mr. 
Conkling,. stated the exact position of the subject before the 
House, and the various questions pending. The Speaker said : 
" The committee having reported this joint resolution, the gen- 
tleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] moved to amend by 
inserting the word ' therein ' after the words ' all persons,' in the 
last clause of the proposed amendment to the Constitution. 

" Pending that motion, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Kelley] moved an entirely new proposition in the nature of a 
substitute ior the joint resolution reported from the joint com- 
mittee, proposing an amendment to the Constitution differing 
from the one reported from the committee. The^gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Baker} also submitted for his colleague [Mr. In- 
gersoll] a proposition in the no.ture of a substitute for the one 
reported from the committee, as an amendment to the amend- 
ment. 

"Pending those two propositions, the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Lawrence] moved to recommit the joint resolution to the 
joint committee with certain instructions. The gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Eliot] moved to amend the instructions, and 
the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Schenck] moved to amend the 
amendment. 

"The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Le Blond] also moved to 
commit the whole subject to the Committee of the Whole on the 
State of the Union. The first question will, therefore, be upon 
the motion to commit to the Committee of the Whole, as that 
commitfee is higher in rank than the joint Committee on Recon- 
struction. 

" Next after that will be the various motions to recommit with 
instructions. If all those propositions should fail, then the mo- 
tion of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, \}l\\ Stevens,] being 



SGJi. THE TEIBTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

for the purpose of perfecting the original proposition, will come 
up for consideration. Then propositions in the nature of substi- 
tutes will come up for consideration ; first the amendment to the 
amendment, proposed by the gentleman from Illinois, [^Mr. Ba- 
ker,] and next -the substitute amendment of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley]." 

Mr. Raymond, of New York, made a speech three hours in 
length, in opposition to the proposed amendment to the Consti- 
tution. He discussed the general questions of reconstruction, 
affirming that the Southern States had resumed their functions 
of self-government in the Union, that they did not change their 
constitutional relations by making war, and that Congress should 
admit their Representatives by districts, receiving only loyal men 
as members. 

The closing words of Mr. Raymond's speech excited great 
sensation and suqarise. They were as follows: "The gigantic 
contest is at an end. The courage and devotion on either side 
which made it so terrible and so long, no longer owe a divided 
duty, but have become the common property of the American 
name, the priceless possession of the American Republic through 
all time to come^ The dead of the contending hosts sleep beneath 
the soil of a common country, and under one common flag. Their 
hostilities are hushed, and they are the dead of the nation for- 
ever more. The victor may well exult in the victory he has 
achieved. Let it be our task, as it will be our highest glory, to 
make the vanquished, and their posterity to the latest generation, 
rejoice in their defeat." 

]Mr. Julian could not accept heartily the proposition reported 
by the joint committee. He thus presented what he considered 
a preferable plan: "Under the constitutional injunction upon the 
United States to guarantee a republican form of government to 
every State, I believe the power aljready ^exists in the nation to 
regulate the right of suffrage. It can- only exercise this power 
through Congress ; and Congress, of course, must decide what is 
a republican form of government, and when the national authority 
shall interpose against State action for the purpose of executing 
the constitutional guarantee. No one will deny the authority of 
Congress to decide that if a State should disfranchise one-third, 
one-half, or two-thirds of her citizens, such State would cease to 
be republican, and might be required to accept a different rule 



BASIS OF REPRESEMTATIOM. • 365 

of suffrage. If Congress eould intervene in such a case, it could 
obviously intervene in any other case in which it might deem it 
necessary or proper. It certainly might decide that the disfran- 
chisement by a State of a whole race of people within her bor- 
ders is inconsistent with a republican form of government, and 
in their behalf, and in the execution of its own authority and 
duty, restore them to their equal right with others to the fran- 
chise. It might decide, for example, tliat in North Carolina, 
where 631,000 citizens disfranchise 331,000, the government is 
not republican, and should be made so by extending the fran- 
chise. It might do the same in Virginia, where 719,000 citizens 
disfranchise 533,000; in Alabama, where 596,000 citizens dis- 
franchise 437,000 ; in Georgia, where 591,000 citizens disfran- 
chise 465,000; in Louisiana, where 357,000 citizens disfranchise 
350,000; in Mississippi, where 353,000 citizens disfranchise 
436,000; and in South Carolina, where only 291,000 citizens 
disfranchise 411,000. Can any man who reverences the Consti- 
tution deny either the authority or the duty of Congress to do 
all this in the execution of the guarantee named ? Or if the 
411,000 negroes in South Carolina were to organize a govern- 
ment, and disfranchise her 291,000 wdiite citizens, would any 
body doubt the authority of Congress to pronounce such govern- 
ment antirepublican, and secure the ballot equally to white and 
black citizens] as the remedy ? Or if a State should prescribe as 
a qualification for the ballot such an ownership of property, real 
or personal, as would disfranchise the great body of her people, 
could not Congress most undoubtedly interfere? So of an edu- 
cational test, which might fix the standard of knowledge so high 
as to place the governing power in the hands of a select few. 
The power in all such cases is a reserved one in Congress, to be 
exercised according to its own judgment, with no accountability 
to any tribunal save the people; and Avithout such power the 
nation would be at the mercy of as many oligarchies as there are 
States. It is true that the power of Congress to guarantee repub- 
lican governments in the Stftcs through its intervention with the 
question of suffrage has not hitherto been exercised, but this 
certainly does not disprove the existence of such power, nor the 
expediency of its exercise now, under an additional and inde- 
pendent constitutional grant, and when a fit occasion for it has come 
through the madness of treason. Why temporize by adopting 



■366 • THE THIRTY-J^IJrTH COJfGBESS. 

half-way measures aud a policy of indirection? The shortest 
distance between two given points is a straight line. Let us 
follow it in so imj)ortant a work as amending the Constitution. 

" How do you know that the broad proposition I advocate 
will fail in Congress or before the people? These are revolu- 
tionary days. Whole generations of common time are now 
crowded into the span of a few years. Life was never before so 
grand and blessed an opportunity. The man mistakes his reck- 
oning who judges either the present or the future by any polit- 
ical almanac of bygone years. Growth, develo|)ment, progress 
are the expressive watchwords of the hour. Who can remember 
the marvelous events of the past four years, necessitated by the 
late war, and then predict the failure of further measures, woven 
into the same fabric, and born of the same inevitable logic ? " 

On Monday, January 30th, the proposed constitutional amend- 
ment was recommitted to the joint Committee on Reconstruction. 
On the following day Mr. Stevens reported back the joint reso- 
lution, with an amendment striking out the words "and direct 
taxes," so as to fix simply the basis of representation in Congress 
upon population, excluding those races or colors to which the 
franchise is denied or abridged. 

Mr. Schenck offered a substitute making " male citizens of the 
United States over twenty-one years " the basis of representation. 
Mr. Schenck occupied a few minutes in advocating his proposi- 
tion. 

On the other hand, Mr. Benjamin, of Missouri, objected to the 
substitute as greatly to the detriment of Missouri, since it would 
reduce her representation in Congress from nine to four, because 
she has endeavored to place the Government in loyal hands by 
disfranchising the rebel element of that State. In doing this, 
she had disfranchised one-half her voters. 

The previous question having been called, Mr. Stevens made 
the closing speech of the protracted discussion. In the opening 
of his speech, Mr. Stevens said : " It is true we have been in- 
formed by high authority, at the other end of the avenue, intro- 
duced through an unusual conduit, that no amendment is neces- 
sary to the Constitution as our fathers made it, and that it is 
better to let it stand as it is. Now, sir,. I think very differently, 
myself, for one individual. I believe there is intrusted to this 
Congress a high duty, no less important and no less fraught with 



BASIS OF BEPRESEJfTATIOJ^. 367 

the weal or woe of future ages than Avas intrusted to the august 
body that made the DecUiration of Independence. I believe now, 
if we omit to exercise that high duty, or abuse it, we shall be 
held to account by future generations of America, and by the 
whole civilized world that is in favor of freedom, and that our 
names will go down to posterity with some applause or with 
' black condemnation if we do not treat the subject thoroughly, 
honestly, and justly in reference to every human being on this 
continent." 

That the above paragraph may be understood, it will bo nec- 
essary to state that the President of the United States himself 
had taken part in the discussion of the measure pending before 
Congress. The " unusual conduit " was the telegraph and the 
press — the means by which his opinions were given to Congress 
and the public. The President's opinions were expressed in the 
following paper, as read by the Clerk of the House, at the re- 
quest of several members : 

" The following is the substance of a conversation which took place yes- 
terday between the President and a distinguished Senator, as telegraphed 
North by the agent of the Associated Press : 

" The President said that he doubted the propriety at this time of making 
further amendments to the Constitution. One great amendment had already 
been made, by which slavery had forever been abolished within the limits 
of the United States, and a national guarantee thus given that the institu- 
tion should never exist in the land. Propositions to amend the Constitution 
were becoming as numerous as preambles and resolutions at town meetings 
called to consider the most ordinary questions connected with the adminis- 
tration of local affairs. All this, in his opinion, had a tendency to diminish 
the dignity and prestige attached to the Constitution of the country, and to 
lessen^'the respect and confidence of the people in their great charter of 
freedom. If, however, amendments are to be made to the Constitution, 
changing the basis of representation and taxation, (and he did not deem them 
at all necessary at the present time,) he knew of none better than a simple 
proposition, embraced in a few lines, making in each State the number of 
qualified voters the basis of representation, and the value of property the 
basis of direct taxation. Such a proposition could be embraced in the fol- 

ing terms: 

" ' Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which 
may be included within this Union according to the number of qualified 
. voters in each State. 

'"Direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may 
be included within this Union according to the value of all taxable property 
in each State.' 



3G8 TEE TniBTT-JflJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

"An amendment of this kind would, in his opinion, place the basis of rep- 
resentation and direct taxation upon correct principles. The qualified vot- 
ers ^Yere, for the most part, men who were subject to draft and enlistment 
when it was necessary to repel invasion, suppress rebellion, and quell do- 
mestic violence and insurrection. They risk their lives, shed their blood, 
and peril their all to uphold the Government, and give protection, security, 
and value to property. It seemed but just that property should compensate 
for the benefits thus conferred by defraying the expenses incident to its 
protection and enjoyment 

"Such an amendment, the President also suggested, would remove from 
Congress all issues in reference to the political equality of the raCes. It 
would leave the States to determine absolutely the qualifications of their 
own voters with regard to color; and thus the number of Representatives 
to which they would be entitled in Congress would depend upon the num- 
ber upon Avhom they conferred the right of suffrage. 

"The President, in this connection, expressed the opinion that the agita- 
tion of the negro-franchise question in the District of Columbia, at this time 
was the mere entering-wedge to the agitation of the question throughout the 
States, and was ill-timed, uncalled for, and calculated to do great harm. 
He believed that it would engender enmity, contention, and strife between 
the two races, and lead to a war between them which would result in great 
injury to both, and the certain extermination of the negro population. 
Precedence, he thought, should be given to more important and urgent mat- 
ters, legislation upon which was essential for the restoration of the Union, 
the peaoe of the country, and the prosperity of the people." 

" This/' said Mr. Stevens, I take to be an authorized utterance 
of one at the other end of the avenue. I have no doubt that this 
is the proclamation, the command of the President of the United 
States, made and put forth by authority in advance, and at a time 
when this Congress was legislating on this very question; made, 
in my judgment, in violation of the privileges of this House; 
made in such a way that centuries ago, had it been made to Par- 
liament by a British king, it would have cost him his head. But, 
sir, we pass that by ; we are tolerant of usurpation in this tolerant 
Government of ours." 

In answer to those who contended that Congress should regu- 
late the right of suffrage in the States, Mr. Stevens said : " If 
you should take away the right which now is and always has 
been exercised by the States, by fixing the qualifications of their 
electors, instead of getting nineteen States, which is necessary to 
ratify this amendment, you might possibly get five. I ven- 
ture to say you could not get five in this Union. And that is 
an answer, in the opinion of the committee, to all that has been 



BASIS OF REPBESEJ^TATIOM. 369 

said on this subject. But it grants no right. It says, however, 
to the State of South Carolina and other slave States, True, we 
leave where it has been left for eighty years the right to fix the 
elective franchise, but you must not abuse it; if you do, the 
Constitution will impose upon you a penalty, aud will continue 
to inflict it until you shall have corrected- your actions. 

" Now, any man who knows any thing about the condition of 
aspiration and ambition for power which exists in the slave 
States, knows that one of their chief objects is to rule this coun- 
try. It was to ruin it if they could not rule it. They have not 
been able to ruin it, and now their great ambition will be to rule 
it. If a State abuses the elective franchise, and takes it from 
those who are the only loyal people there, the Constitution says 
to such a State, You shall lose power in the halls of the nation, 
and you shall remain where you are, a shriveled and dried-up 
nonentity instead of being the lords of creation, as you have 
been, so far as America is concerned, for years past. 

"Now, sir, I say no more strong inducement could ever be 
held out to them ; no more severe punishment could ever be in- 
flicted upon them as States. If they exclude the colored popu- 
lation, they will lose at least thirty-five Representatives in this 
hall; if they adopt it, they will have eighty-three votes." 

Mr. Stevens urged several objections to the proposition of Mr. 
Schenck. He said : " If I have been rightly informed as to the 
number, there are from fifteen to twenty Representatives in the 
Northern States founded upon those who are not citizens of the 
United States. In New York I think there are three or four 
Representatives founded upon the foreign population — three cer- 
tainly. And so it is in Wisconsin, Iowa, and other Northern 
States. There are fifteen or twenty Northern Representatives 
that would be lost by that amendment and given to the South 
whenever they grant the elective franchise to the negro. 

" Now, sir, while I have not any particular regard for any for- 
eigner who goes against me, yet I do not think it would be wise 
to put into the Constitution or send to the people a proposition 
to amend the Constitution which would take such Representatives 
from those States, and which, therefore, they will never adopt. 

" But I have another objection to the amendment of my friend 
from Ohio. His proposition is to apportion representation ac- 
cording to the male citizens of the States. Why has he put in 
24 



370 THE THIRTY-MIJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

the word ' male ? ' It was never in the Constitution of the United 
States before. Why make a crusade against women in the Con- 
stitution of the nation? [Laughter.] Is my friend as much afraid 
of their rivalry as the gentlemen on the other side of the House 
are afraid of the rivalry of the negro ? [Laughter.] I do not think 
we ought to disfigure the Constitution with such a provision. I 
find that every unmarried man is opposed to the proposition. 
Whether married men have particular reason for dreading inter- 
ference from that quarter I know not. [Laughter.] I certainly 
shall never vote to insert the word ' male ' or the word ' white '• 
in the national Constitution. Let these things be attended to by 
the States." 

In answer to the objection that the amendment proposed by the 
committee " might be evaded by saying that no man who had ever 
been a slave should vote, and that would not be disfranchisement 
on account of race or color," Mr. Stevens said : " Sir, no man in 
America ever was or ever could be a slave if he was a white man. 
I know white men have been held in bondage contrary to law. 
But there never was a court in the United States, in a slave State 
or a free State, that has not admitted that if one held as a slave 
could prove himself to be white, he was that instant free. And, 
therefore, such an exclusion, on account of previous condition of 
slavery, must be an exclusion on account of race or color. There- 
fore that objection falls to the ground." 

In reply to the closing paragraph of Mr. Raymond's speech, 
Mr. Stevens said : " I could not but admire (an admiration min- 
gled with wonder) the amiability of temper, the tenderness of heart, 
the generosity of feeling which must have prompted some of the 
closing sentences of the excellent and able speech delivered by the 
gentleman on last Monday. His words were these: 

" ' The gigantic contest is at an end. The courage and devotion on either 
side, which made it so terrible and so long, no longer owe a divided duty, 
but have become the common property of the American name, the priceless 
possession of the American Republic, through all time to come. The dead 
of the contending hosts sleep beneath the soil of a common country, under 
their common flag. Their hostilities are hushed, and they are the dead of 
the nation for evermore.' 

" Sir, much more than amiable, much more than religious, must 
be the sentiment that would prompt any man to say that ^ the 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOM. 371 

courage and devotion* which so long withstood our arms, pro- 
longing the terrible conflict of war, and sacrificing the lives of 
thousands of loyal men, are hereafter to be the common boast of 
the nation, ' the priceless possession of the American Eepublic 
through all time to come ;' that it is the pride of our country so 
many infamous rebels were so ferocious in their murders. 

" Sir, we are to consider these dead on both sides as the dead 
of the nation, the common dead ! And so, I suppose, we are to 
raise monuments beside the monuments to Reynolds and others, 
to be erected in the cemetery on the battle-field of Gettysburg. 
We must there build high the monumental marble for men like 
Barksdale, whom I have seen in this hall draw their bowie-knives 
on the Representatives of the people; men who died upon the 
battle-field of Gettysburg in arms against the Government, and 
where they now lie buried in ditches, ' unwept, unhonored, and 
unsung ! ' They are, I suppose, to be raised and put into the 
fore-front ranks of the nation, and we are to call them through 
all time as the dead of the nation ! Sir, was there ever blasphemy 
before like this? Who was it burnt the temple of Ephesus? 
Who was it imitated the thunder of Jove? All that was poor 
compared with this blasphemy. I say, if the loyal dead, who 
are thus associated with the traitors who murdered them, put by 
the gentleman on the same footing with them, are to be treated 
as the ' common dead of the nation ' — I say, sir, if they could 
have heard the gentleman, they would have broken the cerements 
of the tomb, and stalked forth and haunted him until his eye-balls 
were seared." 

The question was first taken on the substitute offered by Mr. 
Schenck, which was rejected by a vote of one hundred and thirty- 
one to twenty-nine. 

The question was then taken on agreeing to the joint resolution 
as modified by the committee, and it was decided in the affirma- 
tive by the following vote : * 

Yeas — Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, James M. Ashley, Baker, 
Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, 
Boutwell, Brandegee, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader W. 
Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, Darling, Davis, Dawes, 
Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Donnelly, Eckley, Eggleston, Farnsworth, 
Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Griswold, Abner C. Harding, Hart, 
Hayes, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. 



372 THE THIRTY'JflJ^TH CONGRESS. 

Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, Hulburd, 
James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Kuy- 
kendall, Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Longyear, Lynch, 
Marston, Marvin, McClurg, Mclndoe, McKee, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, 
Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, O'Xeill-, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, 
Pike, Plants, Pomeroy, Price, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, 
Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Sloan, Spalding, Starr, Stevens, 
Stilwell, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, Upson, Van Aernam, 
Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Warner, Elihu B. Washburne, 
William B. Washburn, Welker, Wentworth, Williams, James F. Wilson, 
Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Woodbridge — 120. 

Nats — Messrs. Baldwin, Bergen, Boyer, Brooks, Chanler, Dawson, Den- 
nison, Eldridge, Eliot, Finck, Grider, Hale, Aaron Harding, Harris, Ilogan, 
Edwin N. Hubbell, James M. Humphrey, Jenckes, Johnson, Kerr, Latham, 
Le Blond, Marshall, McCullough, Niblack, Nicholson, Noell, Phelps, Sam- 
uel J. Randall, William H. Randall, Raymond, Rittei^ Rogers, Ross, Ros- 
seau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, Smith, Strouse, Taber, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, 
Voorhees, Whaley, and Wright — 46. 

Not Voting — Messrs. Ancona, Delos R. Ashley, Culver, Driggs, Dumont, 
Glossbrenner, Goodyear, Henderson, Higby, Jones, Loan, McRuer, Newell, 
Radford, Trowbridge, and Winfield — IG. 

Two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the Speaker de- 
clared the joint resolution adopted. 

The strong vote by which this measure was passed, after so 
general an expression of dissent from it, excited some surjjrise. 
Many gentlemen evidently surrendered their . individual prefer- 
ences for the sake of unanimity. They believed that this was the 
best measure calculated to secure just representation, which would 
pass the ordeal of Congress and three-fourths of the States. They 
accepted the " rule of statesmanship," to " take the best attainable, 
essential good which is at our command." 

A disposition to rebuke supposed Executive dictation had some 
effect to produce an unexpected unanimity in favor of the measure. 
One Rhode Island and two Massachusetts members insisted on 
national negro suffrage, and voted against the amendments. Mr. 
Raymond and Mr. Hale, of New York, were the only Repub- 
licans who voted against the measure in accordance with the 
President's opinions. Of the border slave State members, ten 
voted for the amendment and sixteen against it. 



BASIS OF KEPJRESEJ{TATIOJr. 87-3 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION-IN THE SENATE. 

The Joint Resolutiox goes to ti{e Senate— Counter-proposition by Mr. 
Sumner— He Speaks Five Hours— Mr. Henderson's Amendment— Mr. 
Fessenden— Mr. Henry S. Lane— Mr. Johnson- Mr. Henderson— Mr. 
Clark's Historical Statements— Fred. Douglass' Memorial — Mr. Wil- 
liams— Mr. Hendricks— Mr. Chandler's "Blood-letting Letter"— 
Proposition of Mr. Yates — His Speech — Mr. Buckalew against New 
England — Mr. Pomehoy— Mr. Sumner's Second Speech— Mr. Doolittle 
— Mr. Morrill — Mr. Fessenden meets Objections-tFinal Vote— The 
Amendment Defeated. 

THE joint resolution, providing for amending tlie basis of 
representation, having passed the House of Representatives 
0^ the last day of January, 1866, the action of that body 
was communicated to the Senate. The Civil Rights Bill at that 
time occupying the attention of the Senate, Mr. Fessenden gave 
notice that unless something should occur to render that course 
unwise, he would ask that the consideration of the proposed 
constitutional amendment should be taken up on the following 
Monday, February 5th. 

On the second of February, Mr. Sumner gave notice of his 
intention to move a joint resolution as a counter-proposition to 
the proposed constitutional amendment. Mr. Sumner's resolution 
was as follows : 

Whereas, it is provided in the Constitution that the United States shall 
guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government ; and 
whereas, by reason of the failure of certain States to maintain Governments 
which Congress can recognize, it has become the duty of the United States, 
standing in the place of guarantor, where the principal has made a lapse, 
to secure to such States, according to the requirement of the guarantee, 
governments republican in form ; and whereas, further, it is provided in a 
recent constitutional amendment, that Congress may ' enforce ' the prohibi- 



374 THE THlRTY'JflJiTH COJ^GBESS. 

tion of slavery by 'appropriate legislation,' and it is important to this end 
that all relics of slavery should be removed, including all distinction of 
rights on account of color; now, therefore, to carry out the guarantee of a 
republican form of government, and to enforce the prohibition of slavery, 
"i?c it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That in all States lately declared to 
be in rebellion there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or monopoly 
invested with peculiar privileges or powers, and there shall be no denial of 
rights civil or political, on account of color or race ; but all persons shall 
be equal before the law, whether in the court-room or at the ballot-box ; 
and this statute, made in pursuance of the Constitution, shall be the su- 
preme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any such 
State to the contrary notwithstanding." 

According to notice given b}*- the Chairman of the joint Com- 
mittee on Eeconstruction on the part of the Senate, the proposed 
constitutional amendment came up for consideration on the fifth 
of February. 

Mr. Sumner addressed the Senate in opposition to the measure. 
His speech was five hours in length, and occupied parts of the 
sessions of two days in its delivery. Mr. Sumner argued that 
the proposed amendment would introduce "discord and defile- 
ment into the Constitution," by admitting that rights could be 
" denied or abridged on account of race or color," and that by its 
adoption Congress would prove derelict to its constitutional duty 
to guarantee a republican form of government to each State, and 
that having already legislated to protect the colored race in civil 
rights, it is bound to secure to them political rights also. 

Concerning the Committee on Eeconstruction and their propo- 
sition, Mr. Sumner said : " Knowing, as I do, the eminent char- 
acter of the committee, its intelligence, its patriotism, and the 
moral instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to under- 
stand the origin of a proposition which seems to me nothing else 
than another compromise of human rights, as if the country 
had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly 
blood for such compromises in the past. I had hoped that the 
day of compromise with wrong had passed forever. Ample ex- 
perience shows that it is the least practical mode of settling ques- 
tions involving moral principles. A moral principle can not be 
compromised." 

He thought the proposed change in the Constitution could not 
properly be called an amendment. " For some time we have been 



. BASIS OF BEPRESEJ^TATIOJ^. 375 

carefully expunging from the statute-book the word ' white,' and 
now it is proposed to insert in the Constitution itself a distinc- 
tion of color. Au amendment, according to the 'dictionaries, 
is ^an improvement' — 'a change for the better/ Surely the 
present proposition is an anjendment which, like the crab, goes 
backward." 

This measure would not accomplish the results desired by its 
authors. " If by this," sjiid he, " you expect to induce the recent 
slave-master to confer the right of suffrage without distinction 
of color, you will find the proposition a delusion and a snare. 
He will do no such thing. Even the bribe you offer will not 
tempt him. If, on the other hand, you expect to accomplish a 
reduction of his political power, it is more than doubtful if you 
will succeed, while the means you employ are unworthy of our 
country. There are tricks and evasions possible, and the cunning 
slave-master will drive his coach and six through your amend- 
ment, stuffed with all his Kepresentatives." 

Drawing toward the close of his speech, Mr. Sumner gave the 
following review of his remarks that had preceded: "^ye have 
seen the origin of the controversy which led to the revolution, 
when Otis, with such wise hardihood, insisted upon equal rights, 
and then giving practical effect to the lofty demand, sounded the 
battle-cry that 'Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.' 
We have followed this controversy in its anxious stages, where 
these principles were constantly asserted and constantly denied, 
until it broke forth in battle; we have seen these principles 
adopted as the very frontlet of the republic, when it assumed its 
place in the family of nations, and then again when it ordained 
its Constitution ; we have seen them avowed and illustrated in 
memorable words by the greatest authorities of the time ; lastly, 
we have seen them embodied in public acts of the States collect- 
ively and individually ; and now, out of this concurring, cumu- 
lative, and unimpeachable testimony, constituting a speaking 
aggregation absolutely without precedent, I offer you the Amer- 
ican definition of a republican form of government. It is in vain 
that you cite philosophers or publicists, or the examples of former 
history. Against these I put the early and constant postulates 
of the fathers, the corporate declarations of the fathers, the avowed 
opinions of the fathers, and the public acts of the fathers, all with 
one voice proclaiming, first, that all men are equal in rights, and, 



376 THE THIRTY-MIJfTH CONGRESS. 

secondly that govcrnmcDts derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed; and here is the American idea of a 
republic, Avliich must be adopted in the interpretation of the 
National Constitution. You can not reject it. As well reject the 
Decalogue in determining moral duties, or as well reject the mul- 
tiplication table in determining a question of arithmetic." 

INIaintaining that "the rebel States are not republican govern- 
ments," Mr. Sumner said : " Begin wij:h Tennessee, which dis- 
franchises 283,079 citizens, being more than a quarter of its whole 
'people.' Thus violating a distinctive principle of republican 
government, how can this State be recognized as republican? 
This question is easier asked than answered. But Tennessee is 
the least offensive on the list. There is Virginia, which dis- 
franchises 549,019 citizens, being more than a third of its whole 
'people.' There is Alabama, which disfranchises 436,030 citi- 
zens, being nearly one half of its whole 'people.' There is 
Louisiana, which disfranchises 350,546 citizens, being one half of 
its whole 'people.' There is Mississippi, which disfranchises 
437,404 citizens, being much more than one half of its whole 
'people.' And there is South Carolina, which disfranchises 
412,408 citizens, being nearly two-thirds of its whole 'people.' 
A republic is a pyramid standing on the broad mass of the peo- 
ple as a base ; but here is a pyramid balanced on its point. To 
call such a government 'republican' is a mockery of sense and 
decency. A monarch, 'surrounded by republican institutions,' 
which at one time was the boast of France, would be less offensive 
to correct principles, and give more security to human rights." 

Of the Southern system of government he said : " It is essen- 
tially a monopoly, in a country which sets its face against all 
monopolies as unequal and immoral. If any monopoly deserves 
unhesitating judgment, it -must be that which absorbs the rights 
of others and engrosses political power. How vain it is to con- 
demn the petty monopolies of commerce, and then allow this vast, 
all-embracing monopoly of human rights." 

Mr. Sunnier maintained that the ballot was the great guaran- 
tee — " the only sufficient guarantee — being in itself peacemaker, 
reconciler, school-master, and protector." The result of conferring 
suffrage upon the negro will be, " The master will recognize the 
new citizen. The slave will stand with tranquil self-respect in 
the presence of the master. Brute force disappears. Distrust is 



BASIS OF REPBESE:^TATI0J^. 377 

at an end. The master is no longer a tyrant. The freedman is 
no longer a dependent. The ballot comes to him in his depres- 
sion, and says, ' Use me and be elevated.' It comes to him in his 
passion, and says, ' Use me and do not fight.' It comes to him 
in his daily thoughts, filling him with the strength and glory of 
manhood." 

IMost beneficent results, it was thought, would flow from such 
legislation as that advocated by Mr. Sumner. "I see clearly," 
said he, " that there is nothing in the compass of mortal power so 
important to them in every respect, morally, politically, and eco- 
nomically — that there is nothing with such certain promise to them 
of beneficent results — that there is nothing so sure to make their 
land smile with industry and fertility as the decree of equal rights 
which I now invoke. Let the decree go forth to cover them with 
blessings, sure to descend upon their children in successive genera- 
tions. They have given us war ; we give them peace. They have 
raged against us in the name of slavery ; we send them back the 
benediction of justice for all. They menace hate ; w^e offer in re- 
turn all the sacred charities of country together with oblivion of 
the past. This is our ' Measure for Measure.' This is our retali- 
ation. This is our only revenge." 

The following was the closing paragraph of Mr. Sumner's 
speech : " The Roman Cato, after declaring his belief in the im- 
mortality of the soul, added, that if this were an error, it was an 
error which he loved. And now, declaring my belief in liberty 
and equality as the God-given birthright of all men, let me say, 
in the same spirit, if this be an error, it is an error which I love ; 
if this be a fault, it is a fliult which I shall be slow to renounce ; 
if this be an illusion, it is an illusion which I pray may wrap the 
world in its angelic arms." 

On the seventh of February, the subject being again before the 
Senate, Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, moved to strike out the con- 
stitutional amendment proposed by the committee and insert the 
following : 

• "Article 14. No State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for elec- 
tors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or 
race." 

Mr. Fessenden made a speech in favor of the report of tiie com- 
mittee, and in reply to Mr. Sumner. Referring to the subject of 
constitutional amendments, Mr. Fessenden said : " Something has 



J7S THE THIRTY-KI^'TH COJ^GEESS. 

been said, also, on different occasions, with reference to a disposi- 
tion that is said to prevail now to amend the Constitution, and 
the forbearance of Congress has been invoked with regard to 
that venerable and great instrument. I believe that I have as 
much veneration for the Constitution as most men, and I believe 
that I have as high an opinion of its wisdom ; but, sir, I proba- 
bly have no better opinion of it than those who made it, and it 
did not seem to them, as we learn from its very provisions, that 
it was so perfect that no amendment whatever could be made that 
would be, in the language of the Senator from ISIassachusetts, an 
improvement. Why, sir, they provided themselves, as we all 
know, in the original instrument, for its amendment. They, in 
the very earliest days of our history, amended it themselves." 

The result of retainmg the "Constitution as it is" would be 
this : " The continuance of precisely the same rule, and the foster- 
ing of a feeling which the honorable Senator from Massachusetts 
has well proven to be contrary to the very foundation principles 
of a republican government. " There can be no question that such 
would be the result ; and we should have m a portion of the States 
all the people represented and all the people acting, and in an- 
other portion of the States all the people represented and but a 
portion of the people only exercising political rights and retain- 
ing them in their own hands. Such has been the case, and such, 
judging of human nature as it is, we have a right to suppose will 
continue to be the case." 

The measure proposed by the committee was not entirely satis- 
factory to Mr. Fessenden. " I am free to confess," said he, " that 
could I legislate upon that subject, although I can see difficulties 
that would arise from it, yet trusting to time to soften them, and 
being desirous, if I can, to put into the Constitution a principle 
that commends itself to the consideration of every enlightened 
mind at once, I would prefer something of that sort, a distinct 
proposition that all provisions in the constitution or laws of any 
State making any distinction in civil or political rights, or priv- 
ileges, or immunities whatever, should be held unconstitutional, 
inoperative, and void, or words to that effect. I would like that 
much better ; and I take it there are not many Senators within 
the sound of my voice who would not very much prefer it; but, 
after all, the committee did not recommend a provision of that 
description, and I stand here as the organ of the committee, ap- 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOJ^. 379 

proving what they have done, and not disposed to urge my own 
peculiar views, if I have any, against theirs, or to rely exclusively 
on my own judgment so far as to denounce what honorable and 
true men, of better judgments than myself, have thought best to 
recommend, and in which I unite and agree with' them." 

After having given objections to limiting the basis of repre- 
sentation to voters, Mr. Fessenden remarked : " And if you ex- 
tend it to citizens, or narrow it to citizens, you make it worse so 
far as many of the States arc concerned ; for my honorable friends 
from the Pacific coast, where there is a large number of foreign- 
ers, would hardly be willing to have them cut off; and they have 
no benefit of political power in the legislation of the country 
arising from the number of those foreigners who make a portion 
of their population. The difficulty is, that you meet with troubles 
of this kind every-where the moment you depart from the prin- 
ciple of basing representation upon population and population 
alone. You meet with inequalities, with difficulties, with troubles, 
either in one section of the country or the other, and yo.u are inev- 
itably thrown back upon the original principle of the Constitution. 

" It will be noticed that the amendment which we have thus 
presented has one good quality : it preserves the original basis of 
representation ; it leaves that matter precisely where the Consti- 
tution placed it in the first instance; it makes no changes in that 
respect; .it violates no prejudice; it violates no feeling. Every 
State is represented according to its population with this distinc- 
tion : that if a State says that it has a portion, a class, which is 
not fit to be represented — and it is for the State to decide — it 
shall not be represented ; that is all. It has another good point : 
it is equal in its operation ; all persons in every State are to be 
counted ; nobody is to be rejected. With the very trifling excep- 
tion fixed by the original Constitution, all races, colors, nations, 
languages, and denominations form the basis. 

But, sir, the great excelleuce of it — and I think it is an excel- 
lence — is, that it accomplishes indirectly what we may not have 
the power to •accomplish directly. If we can not put into the 
Constitution, owing to existing prejudices and existing institu- 
tions, an entire exclusion of all class distinctions, the next ques 
tion is, can we accomplish that work in any other way ? " 

Concerning the " counter-jjroposition " of Mr. Sumner, the 
speaker said ; " It is, in one sense, like a very small dipper with 



SSO THE TEIRTY-KIKTH COjYGBESS. 

a very lono- handle ; for the preamble is very much more diffuse 
than the proposed enactment itself. I looked to see what came 
next. I supposed that after that preamble we should have some 
adequate machinery provided for the enforcement and security 
of these rights"; that we should have the matter put to the 
courts, and if the courts could not accomplish it, that we should 
have the aid of the military power, thus shocking the sensibili- 
ties of my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] again. 
I do not know what good it does to merely provide by law that 
the provisions of the Constitution shall be enforced, without say- 
ino- how, in what manner, by what machinery, in what way, to 
what extent, or how it is to be accomplished. Why reenact the 
Constitution of the United States and put it in a bill ? What 
do you accomplish by it ? How is that a remedy ? It is simply 
as if it read in this way : Whereas, it is provided in the Consti- 
tution that the United States shall guarantee to every State in 
the Union a republican form of government, therefore we declare 
that there shall be a republican form of government and nothing 
else." 

Mr. Sumner had said, in his speech in opposition to the pro- 
posed amendment, " Above all, do not copy the example of Pon- 
tius Pilate, who surrendered the Savior of the world, in whom 
he found no fault at all, to be scourged and crucified, while he 
set at large Barabbas, of whom the Gospel says, in simple words, 
' Now, Barabbas was a robber.' " 

To this Mr. Fessenden responded: "Is it a 'mean compro- 
mise ' — for so it is denominated — that the Committee of Fifteen 
and the House of Kepresentatives, when they passed it, placed 
themselves in the situation of Pontius Pilate, with the negro for 
the Savior of the world and the people of the United States for 
Barabbas, as designated by the honorable Senator. Why, sir, I 
expected to hear him in the next breath go further than that, and 
say that with the Constitution of the United States and the con- 
stitutions of the States the negro had been crucified, and that 
now, by the amendment of the Constitution, the stone had been 
rolled away from the door of the sepulcher, and he had ascended 
to sit on the throne of the Almighty and judge the world ! One 
would have been, permit me to say with all respect, in as good 
taste as the other." 

In conclusion, Mr. Fessenden said : " I wish to say, in closing, 



BASIS OF BEPRESEJTTATIOJ^. 381 

that I commend this joint resolution to the careful consideration 
of the Senate. It is all that we could desire ; it is all that our 
constituents could wish. It does not accomplish, as it stands now, 
all, perhaps, that it might accomplish; but it is an important 
step in the right direction. It gives the sanction of Congress, in 
so many words, to an important, leading, effective idea. It opens 
a way by which the Southern mind — to speak of it as the South- 
ern mind — may be led to that which is right and just. I have 
hopes, great hopes, of those who were recently Confederates ; and 
I believe that now that they have been taught that they can not 
do evil, to all the extent that they might desire, with impunity, 
and when their attention is turned of necessity in the right direc- 
tion, the road will seem so pleasant to their feet, or, at any rate, 
will seem so agreeable to their love of power, that they will be 
willing to walk in the direction that we have pointed. If they 
do, what is accomplished? In process of time, under this con-' 
stitutional amendment, if it should be adopted, they are led to 
enlarge their franchise. That necessarily will lead them to con- 
sider how much further they can go, what is necessary in order 
to fit their people for its exercise, thus leading to education, thus 
leading to a greater degree of civilization, thus bringing up an 
oppressed and downtrodden race to an equality, if capable of an 
equality — and I hope it may be — with their white brethren, chil- 
dren of the same Father. 

" And, sir, if this is done, some of us may hope to live — I 
probably may not, but the honorable Senator from Massachusetts 
may — to see the time when, by their own act, and under the 
effect of an enlightened study of their own interests, all men may 
be placed upon the same broad constitutional level, enjoying the 
same rights, and seeking hap2)iness in the same way and under 
the same advantages ; and that is all that we could ask." 

On the following day, the discussion was continued by Mr. 
Lane, of Indiana, who addressed the Senate in a speech of two 
hours' duration. Mr. Lane seldom occupied the time of the 
Senate by speech-making, but when he felt it his duty to speak, 
none upon the floor attracted more marked attention, both from 
the importance of his matter and the impressiveness of his 
manner. 

Much of Mr. Lane's Sijeech, on this occasion, was devoted to 
the general subject of reconstruction, since he regarded the pend- 



S82 THE THIBTY'JflJfTH COJ^GJRESS. 

ing measure as one of a series looking to the ultimate restoration 
of the late rebel States. He was opposed to undue haste in this 
important Avork. He said : " The danger is of precipitate action. 
Delay is now what we need. The infant in its tiny fingers plays 
to-day with a handful of acorns, but two hundred years hence, 
by the efflux of time, those acorns are the mighty material out 
of which navies are built, the monarch of the forest, defying the 
shock of the storm and the whirlwind. Time is a mighty agent 
in all these affaifs, and we should appeal to time. "VVe are not 
ready yet for a restoration upon rebel votes; we are not ready 
yet for a restoration upon colored votes ; but, thank God ! we are 
willing and able to wait. We have the Government, we have 
the Constitution of the United States, we have the army and the 
navy, the vast moral and material power of the republic. We 
can enforce the laws in all the rebel States, and we can keep the 
•peace until such time as they may be restored with safety to them 
and safety to us." 

Of the measure proposed by the committee, Mr. Lane re- 
marked : " This amendment, as I have already endeavored to 
show, will do away with much of the irregularity now existing, 
and which would exist under a different state of things, the 
blacks being all free. So far as the amendment goes, I approve 
of it, and I think I shall vote for it, but with a distinct under- 
standing that it is not all that we are required to do, that it is 
not the only amendment to the Constitution that Congress is 
required to make." 

Mr. Lane e?:pressed his opinion of Mr. Sumner's " counter- 
proposition " in the following language : " It is a noble declara- 
tion, but a simple declaration, a paper bullet that kills no one, 
and fixes and maintains the rights of no one." 

Of Mr. Henderson's proposition, he said : " It is a simple 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that no one 
shall be excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage on 
account of race or color. That begins at the right point. The 
only objection to it is, that its operation can not be immediate, 
and in the mean time the rebels may be permitted to vote, and 
its adoption by the various State Legislatures is exceedingly 
doubtful. I should not doubt^ however, that we might secure 
its adoption by three-fourths of the loyal States who have never 
seceded ; and I believe that whenever that question is presented, 



BASIS OF BEFEESENTATIOK. 383 

the Supreme Court of the United States will determine that a 
ratification by that number of States is a constitutional approval 
of an amendment so as to make it the supreme law of the land. 
I have no doubt about it. 

" If the rebel States are to be organized immediately, the only 
question is whether the right of suftrage shall be given to rebel 
white men or loyal black men. The amendment of the Senator 
from Missouri meets that issue squarely in the face. Whatsoever 
I desire to do I will not do by indirection. I trust I shall always 
be brave enough to do whatsoever I think ray duty requires, 
directly and not by indirection." 

Mr. Lane, with several other Western Senators, had been 
counted as opposed to negro suifragc, hence his advocacy of the 
principle gave much strength to those who desired to take a po- 
sition in advance of the proposition of the committee. 

In reply to an oft-reiterated argument that a war of races would 
result from allowing suffrage to the negro, Mr. Lane remarked : 
" If you wish to avoid a war of races, how can that be accom- 
plished ? By doing right ; by fixing your plan of reconstruction 
upon the indestructible basis of truth and justice. What lesson 
is taught by history ? The grand lesson is taught there that re- 
bellions and insurrections have grown out of real or supposed 
wrong and oppression. A war of races ! And you are told to 
look to the history of Ireland, and to the history of Hungary. 
Why is it that revolution and insurrection are always ready to 
break out in Hungary? Because, forsooth, the iron rule of 
Austria has stricken down the natural rights of the masses. It 
is a protest of humanity against tyranny, oppression, that pro- 
duces rebellion and revolution. So in the bloody history of the 
Irish insurrections. Suppose the English Parliament had given 
equal rights to the Irish, had enfranchised" the Catholics in Ire- 
land in the reign of Henry VIII, long ere this peace and har- 
mony would have prevailed between England and Ireland. But 
the very fact that a vast portion of a people are disfranchised 
sows the seeds of continual and ever-recurring revolution and 
insurrection. It can not be otherwise. These insurrections and 
revolutions, which are but the protest of our common humanity 
against wrong, are one of the scourges in the hands of Providence 
to compel men to do justice and to observe the right. It is the 
law of Providence, written upon every page of history, that God's 



884 THE THIBTY-J^IJ^TH QOJ^GRESS. 

vengeance follows man's wrong and oppression, and it will always 
be so. If you wish to avoid a war of races, if you wish to pro- 
duce harmony and peace among these people, you must enfranchise 
them all." 

On the following day, February 9th, Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, 
occupied the time devoted by the Senate to a consideration of this 
question with a speech against the proposed amendment of the 
Constitution. Mr. Johnson said that when the Constitution was 
framed there was no such objection to compromising as now ex- 
isted in the minds of some Senators. " The framers of the Con- 
stitution came to the conclusion that the good of the country 
demanded that there should be a compromise, and they proposed, 
as a compromise, the provision as it now stands ; and that is, that 
for the purposes of representation, a person held in slavery, or in 
involuntary servitude, shall be esteemed three-fifths of a man and 
two-fifths property ; and they established the same rule in relation 
to taxation. They very wisely concluded that, as it was all-im- 
portant that some general rule should be adopted, this was the best 
rule, because promising more than any other rul§ to arrive at a 
jast result of ascertaining the number of Representatives and 
ascertaining the quota of taxation." 

Mr. Johnson did not think that the North needed such a pro- 
vision as this ameudriient to render her able to cope with Southern 
statesmanship in Congress : " Are not the North and the states- 
men of the. North equal to the South and the statesmen of the 
South on all subjects that may come before the councils of the 
nation ? "What is there, looking to the history of the two sections 
in the past, which would lead us to believe that the North is in- 
ferior to the South in any thing of intellectual improvement or 
of statesmanship ? You have proved — and I thank- God you have 
proved — that if listening to evil counsels, rendered effective, per- 
haps, by your own misjudged legislation, and by the ill-advised 
com'se of your own population, exhibited through the press and 
the pulpit, a portion of the South involved the country in a war, 
the magnitude of which no language can describe — you have 
proved yourselves adequate to the duty of defeating them in their 
mad and, as far as the letter of the Constitution is concerned, 
their traitorous purpose. And now, having proved your physical 
manliood, do you doubt your intellectual manhood? Mr. Presi- 
dent, in the presence in which I speak, I am restrained from 



BASIS OF BEFRESEKTATIOK. 3Sd 

speaking comparatively of the Senate as it is and the Senate as 
it has been; but I can say this, with as mucli sincerity as man 
ever spoke, that there is nothing to be found in the free States 
calculated to disparage them properly in the estimation of the 
wise and the good. They are able to conduct the Government, 
and they will not be the less able because they have the advice 
and the counsels of their Southern brethren." 

In answer to the position that the Southern States were not 
■possessed of a republican form of government, Mr. Johnson re- 
marked : " Did our fathers consider that any one of the thirteen , 
States who finally came under the provisions of that Constitution, 
and have ever since constituted a part of the nation, were not 
living under republican forms of government? The honorable 
member will pardon me for saying that to suppose it is to dis- 
parage the memory of those great and good men. There was not 
a State in the Union when the Constitution was adopted that was 
republican, if the honorable member's definition of a republican 
government is the one now to be relied upon. A property qual- 
ification was required in all at that time. Negroes were not al- 
lowed to vote, although free, in most of the States. In the 
Southern States the mass of the negroes were slaves, and, of 
course, were not entitled to vote. If the absence of the universal 
right of suffrage proves that the Government is not republican, 
then there was not a republican government within the limits of 
the United States when the Constitution was adopted ; and yet 
the very object of the clause to guarantee a republican govern- 
ment — and the honorable member's citations prove it — was to 
prevent the existing governments from being changed by revolu- 
tion. It was to preserve the existing governments ; and yet the 
honorable member would have the Senate and the country believe 
that, in the. judgment of the men who framed the Constitution, 
there was not a republican form of government in existence. 

" The definition of the honorable member places his charge of 
antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon 
the ground of the right to vote. I suppose the black man has 
no more natural right to vote than the white man. It is the 
exdusion from the right that affects the judgment of the honora- 
ble member from Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a 
right derived from God ; it is in every man inalienable ; and its 
denial, therefore, is inconsistent and incompatible with the true 
25 . 



3 86 THE THIBTT-JflJfTE COJfGEESS. 

object of a free government. If it be such a right, it is not less 
a ri<^ht in the white man than in the black man ; it is not less a 
ri"-ht in the Indian than in the white man or the black man ; it 
is not less a right in the female portion of our population than 
in the male portion. Then the honorable member from Massa- 
chusetts is living in an antirepublican government, and he ought 
not to stay there a moment if he can find any government which 
would be a government according to his theory. None has ex- 
isted since the world commenced, and it is not at all likely that 
any will exist in all time to come ; but if there is any such gov- 
ernment to be found on the face of the earth, let him leave ISIassa- 
chusetts, let him hug that angelic delusion which he hopes will 
encircle the whole world, and go somewhere, where he can indulge 
it without seeing before him every day conclusive evidence that no 
such illusion exists at home. Leave Massachusetts, I beg the 
honorable member, just as soon as you can, or you will never be 
supremely happy." 

In conclusion, Mr. Johnson remarked, referring to the recent 
rebels: "Let us take them to our bosom, trust them, and as I 
believe in my existence, you will never have occasion to regret it. 
You will, if the event occurs, look back to your participation in 
it in future time with unmingled delight, because you will be able 
to date from it a prosperity and a national fame of which the 
world furnishes no examj)le; and you will be able to date from 
it the absence of all cause of differences which can hereafter exist, 
which will keep us together as one people, looking to one destiny, 
and anxious to achieve one renown." 

On Tuesday, February 13th, the Senate resumed the consider- 
ation of the Basis of Eepresentation. Mr. Sumner proposed to 
amend the proviso recommended by the committee — " all persons 
therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of 
representation" — by adding the words "and they shall be ex- 
empt from taxation of all kinds." 

Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, 'occupied the attention of the Sen- 
ate, during a considerable part of this and the following day, in a 
speech agaii>st the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen, which 
he considered a compromise, surrendering the rights of the negro 
out of the hands of the Qeneral Government into the hands of 
States not fit to be intrusted with them. In favor of his own 
amendment prohibiting the States from disfranchising citizens on 



BASIS OF REPRESEMTdTIOJT. 387 

the ground of color, Mr. Henderson said: "I propose to make 
the State governments republican in fact, as they are in theory. 
The States now have the power and do exclude the negroes for 
no other reason than that of color. If the negro is equally com- 
peteiTt and equally devoted to the Government as the Celt, the 
Saxon, or the Englishman, why should he not vote? If he pays 
his taxes, works the roads, repels foreign invasion with his nms- 
ket, assists in suppressing insurrections, fells the forest, tills the 
soil, builds cities, and erects churches, what more shall he do to 
give him the simple right of saying he must be only equal in 
these burdens, and not oppressed ? My proposition is put in the 
least offensive form. It respects the traditionary right of the 
States to prescribe the qualifications of voters. It does not re- 
quire that the ignorant and unlettered negro shall vote. Its 
Avords are simply that ^lio State, in prescribing the qualifica- 
tions requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against 
any person on account of color or race.' The States may yet 
prescribe an educational or property test; but any such. test ^shall 
apply to white and black alike. If the black man be excluded 
because he is uneducated, the uneducated white man must be ex- 
cluded too. If a property test be adopted for the negro, as in 
New York, the same test must apply to the white man. It 
reaches all the States, and not a few only, in its operation. I 
confess that, so far as I am personally concerned, I would go still 
further and put other limitations on the power of the States in 
regard to suffrage; but Senators have expressed so much distrust 
that even this proposition can not succeed, I have concluded to 
present it in a form the least objectionable in which I could frame 
it. It will be observed that this amendment, if adopted, will not 
prevent the State Legislatures from fixing official qualifications. 
■ They may prevent a negro from holding any office whatever 
under the State organization. It is a singular fact, however, that 
to-day, under the Federal Constitution, a negro may be elected 
President, United States Senator, or a member of the lower 
branch of Congress. In that instrument no qualification for 
office is prescribed which rejects the negro. The white man, not 
native born, may not be President, but the native-born African 
may be. The States, however, may, in this respect, notwith- 
standing this amendment, do what the Federal Constitution never 
did." 



JS8 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GJiESS. 

Mr. Henderson closed his speech with the following words : 
"The reasons in favor of my proposition are inseparably con- 
nected with all I have said. I need not repeat them. Ever}' 
consideration of peace demands it. It must be done to remove 
the relics of the rebellion ; it must be done to pluck out political 
disease from the body politic, and restore the elementary princi- 
ples of our Government; it must be done to preserve peace in 
the States and harmony in our Federal system; it must be done 
to assure the happiness and prosperity of the Southern people 
themselves; it must be done to establish in our institutions the 
principles of universal justice; it must be done to secure the 
strongest possible guarantees against future wars; it must be 
done in obedience to that golden rule which insists upon doing 
to others what we would that others should do unto us ; it must 
be done if we would obey the moral Mw that teaches us to love 
our neighbors as ourselves; in fine, it must be done to purify, 
strengthen, and perpetuate a Government in which are now 
fondly centered the best hopes of mankind." 

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, addressed the Senate on the 
pending measure. He made the following interesting historical 
statements: "As the traveler who has passed a difficult road, 
when he comes to some high hill looks back to see the difficult- 
ies which he has passed, I turn back, and I ask the Senator to 
turn back, to consider what occurred, as I say, about six years 
ago. In the session of 1859-60, in the oid Senate-chamber, a bill 
was brought into the Senate of the United States by the then 
Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown], who was chairman of the 
Committee on the District of Columbia, a place which my friend 
from Maine [Mr. Morrill] now so worthily fills — a bill in aid of 
the education of the children of this District. The bill proposed 
to grant certain fines and forfeitures to the use of the schools, and 
also proposed to tax the people ten cents on every hundred dollars 
of the property in this District for the purpose of educating the 
children. That bill proposed to tax the white man and the black 
man alike ; and fearing that the property of the black man would 
be tiixed to educate the child of the white man, I proposed an 
amendment to the bill, that the tax collected from the black man 
should go to educate the black man's child. 

"There was also a further provision of the bill, that if the 
District raised a certain amount of money for the education of 



BASIS OF REPRESEXTATIOJ^. ' 389 

the children, the Government of the United States would appro- 
priate a like amount from the Treasury. If, for instance, you 
raised $20,000 by taxes on the people in the District, the Gov- 
ernment should pay $20,000 more, to be added to it for the ed- 
ucatioa of the children of the District. I moved the amendment 
that no cliild whose father paid any portion of that tax for the 
education of the children should be excluded from the benefit 
of it, be he white or black ; but that there might be no incon- 
venience felt, I agreed to an amendment that the black child 
should not be put into the same school with the white child, but 
that they should be educated in different schools to be provided 
for them ; but if the black man paid for educating the children 
of the District, his child should be educated. There was at 
once an outcry, ' Why, this is social equality of the two races ; 
this is political equality;' and they would not consent that the 
black child should be educated, even with the money of the 
black father. That amendment was declared to be carried in the 
Senate of the United States, and after declaring it was carried, 
the Senate adjourned, and after the adjournment, the chairman 
of fliat committee, Mr. Brown, appealed to me personally if I 
would not withdraw it. I said to him, 'No, I would never 
withdraw it ; if you tax the black man, the black man should 
have a part of the money that you raise from him to educate 
his child.' 

"After some days, the bill came up again in the Senate of the 
United States, and the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman 
of the Committee on the District of Columbia, got up and in 
open Senate appealed to me, 'Will the Senator from New 
Hampshire withdraw that amendment?' 'Never, Mr. Presi- 
dent.' 'Then,' said the Senator from Mississippi, 'I will lay 
the bill aside, and will not ask the Senate to pass it;' and 'so 
the whole scheme failed, because they would not consent that 
the money of the black man should educate his o^vn child, and 
they could not vote it to educate a white child. 

"Now I turn back to that time six years ago, and I mark 
the road that we have come along. I mark where we struck the 
chains from the black man in this same District, whose child 
you could not educate six years ago; I mark, in this Senate, 
at this very session, that we have passed a bill in aid of the 
Freedmen's Bureau to secure to him his rights in this District; 



390 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

I mark that all through this nation we have strickeij off the 
chains of the slave and secured to the slave his rights elsewhere 
in the Union ; and we have now come to the height of the hill, 
and are considering whether we will not enfranchise those very 
black men through all the country." 

In favor of granting political rights to the negro, Mr. Clark 
made the following remarks : " Mr. President, the question of the 
pegro has troubled the nation long. His condition as a slave 
troubled you; and his condition as a freedman troubles you. 
Are you sick, heart-sick of this trouble? and do you inquire 
when will it end ? I will tell you. "When you have given him 
equal rights, equal privileges, and equal security with other citi- 
zens; when you have opened the way for him to be a man, then 
T\-ill you have rendered exact justice which can alone insure sta- 
bility and content. 

" Sir, if I ever did hold that this Government was made or 
belonged exclusively to the white man, I should now be ashamed 
to avow it, or to claim for it so narrow an application. The 
black man has made too many sacrifices to preserve it, and en- 
dangered his life too often in its defense to be excluded from- it. 
The common sentiment of gratitude should open its doors to him, 
if not political justice and equality. 

"Mr. President, my house once took fire in the night-time; 
my two little boys were asleep in it, when I and their mother 
were away. The neighbors rushed into it, saved the children, and 
extinguished the flames. AVhen I reached it, breathless and ex- 
hausted, the first exclamation was, ' Your children are safe.' Can 
you tell me how mean a man I should have been, and what exe- 
cration I should have deserved, if the next time those neighbors 
came to my house I had kicked them out of it? Tell me, then, 
I pray you, why two hundred thousand black men, most of whom 
volunteered to fight your battles, who rushed in to save the burn- 
ing house of your Government, should not be permitted to par- 
ticii)ate in that Government which they helped to preserve? 
When you enlisted and mustered these men, when your adjutant- 
general went South, and gathered them to the recruiting-office, 
and persuaded them to join your ranks, did he, or any one, tell 
them this was the white man's Government ? When they came 
to the rendezvous, did you point to the sign over the door, ' Black 
men wanted to defend the white man's Government?' When 



BASIS OF REPBESEJVTATIOM. 391 

you put, upon tliera the uniform of the United States, did you say, 
* Do n't disgrace it ; this is the white man's Government ? ' "When 
they toiled on the march, in the mud, the rain, and the snow, 
and when they fell out of the ranks from sheer weariness, did 
you cheer them on with the encouragement that ' this is the 
white man's Government?' 

" When they stood on picket on the cold, stormy night to guard 
you against surprise, did you creep up and warm their congealing ■ 
blood with an infusion of the white man's Government ? When, 
with a wild hurrah, on the ' double-quick,' they rushed upon the 
enemy's guns, and bore your flag where men fell fastest and war 
made its wildest havoc, where explosion after explosion sent their 
mangled bodies and severed limbs flying through the air, and 
they fell on glacis, ditch, and scarp and counterscarp, did you 
caution them against such bravery, and remind them that ' this 
was the white man's Government ? ' And when the struggle was 
over, and many had fought ^ their last battle,' and you gathered 
the dead for burial, did you exclaim, ' Poor fools ! how cheated ! 
this is the white man's Government?' No, no, sir; you beck- 
oned them on by the guerdon of freedom, the blessings of an equal 
and just Government, and a ' good time coming.' 

"'White man's Government,' do you say? Go to Fort Pil- 
low; stand upon its ramparts and in its trenches, and recall the 
horrid butchery of the black man there because he had joined you 
against rebellion, and then say, if you will, ' This is the white 
man's Government.' Go to Wagner. Follow in the track of the 
Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, as they went to the terrible assault, 
with the guns flashing and roaring in the darkness. Mark how 
unflinchingly they received the pelting iron hail into their bosoms, ' 
and how they breasted the foe ! See how nobly they supported, 
and how heroically they fell with their devoted leader ; count the 
dead; pick up the severed limbs; number the wounds; measure 
the blood spilled ; and remember why and wherefore and in whose 
cause the negro thus fought and suffered, and then say, if you can^ 
' This is the white man's Government.' Go to Port Hudson, go 
to Richmond, go to Petersburg, go anywhere and every-where — 
to every battle-field where the negro fought, where danger was 
greatest and death surest — and tell me, if you can, that ' this is 
the white man's Government.' And then go to Salisbury and 
Columbia and Andersonville, and as you shudder at the ineffable 



392 THE THIRTY-KIKTE COJfGBESS. 

miseries of those dens, and think of those who ran the dead-line, 
and were not shot, but escaped to the woods and were concealed 
and fed and piloted by the black men, and never once betrayed, 
but often enabled to escape and return to their friends, and then 
tell me if ' this is a white man's Government/ 

" In ancient Rome, when one not a citizen deserved well of the 
republic, he was rewarded by the rights of citizenship, but we 
deny them, and here in America — not in the Confederate States 
of America, where, attempting to found a government upon 
slavery and the subjection of one race to another, it would have 
been fitting, if anywhere, but in the United States of America, 
the cardinal principle of whose Government is the equality of all 
men. After these black men have so nobly fought to maintain 
the one and overthrow the other, when they ask us for the neces- 
sary right of suffrage to protect themselves against the rebels they 
have fought, and with whom they are compelled to live, we coolly 
reply, ' This is the white man's Government.' Nay, more, and 
worse, we have refused it to them, and allowed it to their and our 
worst enemies, the rebels. Sir, from the dim and shadowy aisles 
of the past, there comes a cry of ' Shame ! shame !' and pagan 
Rome rebukes Christian America. 

" But not chiefly, Mr. President, do I advocate this right of the 
black man to vote because he has fought the battles of the repub- 
lic and helped to preservfe the Union, but because he is a citizen 
and a man — one of the people, one of the governed — upon whose 
consent, if the Declaration of Independence is correct, the just 
powers of the Government rest ; an intelligent being, of whom 
and for whom God' will have an account of us, individually and 
as a nation; whose blood is one with ours, whose destinies are 
intermingled and run with ours, whose life takes hold on immor- 
tality with ours, and because this right is necessary to develop 
his manhood, elevate his race, and secure for it a better civiliza- 
tion and a more enlightened and purer Christianity." 

On the 15th of February, Mr. Sumner presented a memorial 
from George T. Downing, Frederick Douglass, and other colored 
citizens of the United States, protesting against the pending con- 
stitutional amendment as introducing, for the first time, into the 
Constitution a grant to disfranchise men on the ground of race 
or color. In laying this memorial before the Senate, Mr. Sum- 
ner said : " I do not know that I have at any time presented a 



BASIS OF BEPRESEMTATIOJf, 393 

memorial which was entitled to more respectful consideration than 
this, from the character of its immediate signers and from the vast 
multitudes they represent. I hope I shall not depart from the 
proper province of presenting it if I express my entire adhesion 
to all that it says, and if I take this occasion to entreat the Sen- 
ate, if they will not hearken to arguments against the pending 
proposition, that they will at least hearken to the voice of these 
memorialists, representing the colored race of our country." 

Mr. "Williams, of Oregon, argued in favor of the resolution 
reported by the committee as the best measure before the Senate. 
He was for proceeding slowly in the work of reconstruction. In 
his opinion, neither the negro nor his master was now fit to vote. 
Upon this point he said : " It seems to me there can be little 
doubt that at this particular time the negroes of the rebel States 
are unfit to exercise the elective franchise. I have recently con- 
versed with two officers of the Federal army from Texas, who 
told me that there, in the interior and agricultural portions of 
the State, the negroes do not yet know that they are free ; and 
one of the officers told me that he personally communicated to 
several negroes for the first time the fact of their freedom. Eman- 
cipation may be known in the towns and cities throughout the 
South, but the probabilities are that in the agricultural portions 
of that country the negroes have no- knowledge that they are free, 
or only vague conceptions of their rights and duties as freemen. 
Sir, give these men a little time ; give them a chance to learn that 
they are free; give them a chance to acquire some knowledge of 
their rights as freemen ; give them a chance to learn that they 
are independent and can act for themselves; give them a chance 
to divest themselves of that feeling of entire dependence for sub- 
sistence and the sustenance of their families upon the landholders 
of the South, to which they have been so long accustomed ; give 
them a little time to shake the manacles off of their minds that 
have just been stricken from their hands, and I will go with the 
honorable Senator from Massachusetts to give them the right of 
suffrage. And I will here express the hope that the day is not 
far distant when every man born upon American soil, within the 
pale of civilization, may defend his manhood and his rights as a 
freeman by that most effective ballot which 

'"Executes the freeman's will 
As lightning does the will of God.' 



394 TSE TEIRTY-J^IiN'TH COJfGBESS. 

Concerning the amendment proposed by Mr. Henderson, Mr. 
Williams said: "All the impassioned declamation and all the 
vehement assertions of the honorable Senator do not change or 
affect the evidence before our eyes that the people of these United 
States are not prepared to surrender to Congress the absolute 
right to determine as to the qualifications of voters in the respect- 
ive States, or to adopt the proposition that all persons, without 
distinction of race or color, shall enjoy political rights and priv- 
ileges equal to those now possessed by the white people of the 
country. Sir, some of the States have lately spoken upon that 
subject. Wisconsin and Connecticut, Northern, loyal, and Repub- 
lican States, have recently declared that they would not allow the 
negroes within their own borders political rights ; and is it prob- 
able that of the thirty-six States, more than six, at the most, 
would at this time adopt the constitutional amendment proposed 
by the gentleman ? " 

Notwithstanding the temporary darkness of the political sky, 
Mr. Williams saw brilliant prospects before the country. " This 
nation," said he, "is to live and not die. God has written it 
among the shining decrees of destiny. Inspired by this hope and 
animated by this faith, we will take this country through all its 
present troubles and perils to the promised land of perfect unity 
and peace, where freedom, equality, and justice, the triune and 
tutelar deity of the American Republic, will rule with righteous- 
ness a nation ^ whose walls shall be salvation and whose gates 
praise.' " 

At the close of this speech, the Senate being about to proceed 
to a vote 'upon the pending amendment, it was proposed to defer 
action and adjourn the question over to the following day, for the 
purpose of affording an opportunity for speeches by Senators who 
were not prepared to proceed immediately. Mr. Fessendeu, who 
had the measure in charge, protested against the delays of the 
Senate. " This subject," said he, " has dragged along now for 
nearly two weeks. If members desire to address the Senate, 
they must be prepared to go on and do so without a. postpone- 
ment from day to day for the purpose of allowing every gentle- 
man to make his speech in the morning, and then adjourning early 
every evening. We shall never get through in that way. I give 
notice to gentlemen that I shall begin to be a little more quar- 
relsome — I do not know that it will do any good — after to-day." 



BASIS OF REPRESEJTTATlOJf. 395 

On the day following, Mr. Hendricks delivered a speech of 
considerable length in opposition to the constitutional amend- 
ment. After having maintained that the proposition did not rest 
the right of representation upon population, nor upon property, 
nor upon voters, Mr. Hendricks inquired: "Upon what prin- 
ciple do Senators propose to adopt this amendment to the Con- 
stitution ? I can understand it if you say that the States shall 
be represented in the House of Representatives upon their pop- 
ulation ; I can understand it if you say that they shall be repre- 
sented upon their voters ; but when you say that one State shall 
have the benefit of its non-voting population and another State 
shall not, I can not understand the principle of equity and justice 
which governs you in that measure. Sir, if it does not stand upon 
a principle, upon what does it rest? It rests upon a political 
policy. A committee that had its birth in a party caucus brings 
it before this body, and does not conceal the fact that it is for 
party purposes. This measure, if you ever allow the Southern 
States to be represented in the House of Representatives, will bring 
them back shorn of fifteen or twenty Representatives; it will 
bring them back so shorn in their representation that the Repub- 
lican party can control this country forever ; and if you cut off 
from fifteen to thirty votes for President, of the United States in 
the States that will not vote for a Republican candidate, it may 
be that you can elect a Republican candidate in 1868." 

Mr. Hendricks thought that " this proposition was designed to 
accomplish three objects : first, to perpetuate the rule and power of 
a political party ; in the second place, it is a proposition the ten- 
dency of which is to place agriculture under the control and power 
of manufactures and commerce forever ; and, in the third place, it 
is intended, I believe, as a punishment upon the Southern States." 

In reference to changing the basis of representation as a pun- 
ishment for the Southern States, Mr. Hendricks said : " Now that 
the war is over ; now that the Southern people have laid down 
their arms ; now that they have sought to come again fully and 
entirely into the Union ; now that they have pledged their honors 
and their fortunes to be true to the Union and to the flag; now 
that they have done all that can be done by a conquered people, 
is it right, after a war has been fought out, for us to take from 
them their political equality in this Union for the purpose of 
punishment? The Senator from Maine, the chairman of the 



396 TEE TEIBTY-J^IJ^TH CONGRESS. 

committee, says that the right to control the suifrage is with the 
States, but if the States do not choose to do right in respect to it, 
we propose to punish them. You do not punish New York for 
not letting the foreigner vote until he resides there a certain 
period. You do not punish Indiana because she will not allow 
a foreigner to vote until he has been in the country a year. 
These States are not to be jDunished because they regulate the 
elective franchise according to their sovereign pleasures; but if 
any other States see fit to deny the right of voting to a class that 
is peculiarly guarded and taken care of here, then they are to be 
punished." 

Referring to the speech of the Senator from New Hampshire, 
Mr. Hendricks asked : " Had the white men of this country a 
right to establish a Government, and thereby a political commu- 
nity? If so, they had a right to say who should be members of 
that political community. They had a right to exclude the col- 
ored man if they saw fit. Sir, I say, in the language of the 
lamented Douglas, and in the language of. President Johnson, 
this is the white man's Government, made by the white man for 
the white man. I am not ashamed to stand behind such distin- 
guished men in maintaining a sentiment like that. Nor was my 
judgment on the subject changed the day before yesterday by the 
lamentations of the Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. Clark,] 
sounding through this body like the wailing of the winds in the 
dark forest, ' that it is a horrible thing for a man to say that this 
is a white man's Government.' 

" Mr. President, there is a great deal said about the part the 
colored soldiers have taken in putting down this rebellion — a great 
deal more than there is any occasion for, or there is any support 
for in fact or history. This rebellion was put down by the white 
soldiers of this country." 

Criticising sentiments toward the South, expressed by Senators, 
Mr. Hendricks said : " We hear a good deal said about blood now. 
Yesterday the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Williams] criticised the 
President for his feniency toward the South. A few days ago, 
the Senator from Ohio [Mr, Wade] made a severe criticism on 
the President for his leniency, and my colleague asks for blood. 
Mr. President, this war commenced with blood; nay, blood was 
demanded before the war. When the good men and the patriotic, 
North and South, representing the yearning hearts of the people 



BASIS OF REPBESEMTATIO:^'. 397 

at home, came here, in the winter and spring of 1861, in a peace 
congress, if possible to avoid this dreadful war, right then the 
Senator from Michigan [Mr. Chandler] announced to his Gov- 
ernor and the country that this Union was scarcely worth pre- 
serving without some blood-letting. His cry before the war was 
for blood. Allow me to say that when the Senator's name is for- 
gotten because of any thing he says-or does in this body, in future 
time it will be borne down npon the pages of history as the author 
of the terrible sentiment that the Union of the people that our 
fathers had cemented by the blood of the Eevolution and by the 
love of the people; that that Union, resting upon compromise and 
concession, resting upon the doctrine of equality to all sections of 
the country ; that that Union which brought us so much greatness 
and power in the three-quarters of a century of our life ; that that 
Union that had brought us so much prosperity and greatness, 
until we were the mightiest and proudest nation on God's foot- 
stool ; that that grand Union was not worth preserving unless we 
had some blood-letting ! " 

Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, replied : " The Senator from In- 
diana has arraigned me upon an old indictment for having written 
a certain letter in 1861. It is not the first time that I have been 
arraigned on that indictment of ' blood-letting.' I was first ar- 
raigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C. Breckinridge ; 
and I answered the traitor John C. Breckinridge; and after I 
gave him his answer, he went out into the rebel ranks and fought 
against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator from Ken- 
tucky and by other traitors upon this floor. I expect to be ar- 
raigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter ; and 
what was in it? What was the position of .the country when that 
letter was written? The Democratic party, as an organization, 
had arrayed itself against this Government — a Democratic traitor 
in the presidential chair, and a Democratic traitor in every de- 
partment of this Government; Democratic traitors preaching 
treason upon this floor, and preaching treason in the hall of the 
other house ; Democratic traitors in your army and in your navy ; 
Democratic traitors cpntrolling eveiy branch of this Government. 
Your flag was fired upon, and there was no response. The 
Democratic party had ordained that this Government should be 
overthrown ; and I, a Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote 
to the Governor of that State, ' Unless you are prepared to shed 



398 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

blood for the preservation of this great Government, the Govern- 
ment is overthrown.' That is all there was to that letter. That 
I said, and that I say again ; and I tell that Senator if he is pre- 
pared to go down in history with the Democratic traitors who 
then cooperated with him, I am prepared to go down on that 
' blood-letting ' letter, and I stand by the record as then made." 
[Applause in the galleries.] 

On the 19tli of February, Mr. Howard, of Miohigan, offered an 
amendment providing that the right of suffrage should be enjoyed 
by all persons of African descent belonging to the following classes : 
those who have been in the military service of the United States, 
those who can read and write, and those who possess §250 worth 
of property. 

Mr. Yates, of Illinois, addressed the Senate for three hours on 
the pending amendment of the Constitution. On the 29th of 
January preceding, Mr. Yates had proposed a bill providing that_ 
no State or Territory should make any distinction between citizens 
on account of race, or color, or condition ; and that all citizens, 
without distinction of race, color, or condition, should be protected 
in the enjoyment and exercise of all their civil and political rights, 
including the right of suffrage. 

This bill Mr. Yates made the basis of his argument. His 
reason for preferring a bill to a constitutional amendment was 
presented as follow^ : " There is only one way of salvation for the 
country. Your amendments to the" Constitution of the United 
States can not be adopted. If we have not the power now under 
the Constitution of the United States to secure full freedom, then, 
sir, we shall not have it, and there is no salvation whatever for 
the country. Let not. freedom die in the house, and by the hands 
of her friends." 

Mr. Yates maintained that the constitutional amendment abol- 
ishing slavery gave to Congress power to legislate to the fidl 
extent of the measure proposed by him. " Let gentlemen come 
forward," said he, " and meet the issue like men. Let them come 
forward and do what they have by the Constitution the clear 
power to do, and that is a sine qua non in order to carry into 
effect the constitutional prohibition of slavery. As for me, I 
would rather face the music and meet the responsibility like a 
man, and send to the people of the State of Illinois the boon of 
universal suffrage, and of a full and complete emancipation, than 




'S iyGEPenne^C 




KiCHARD YA.TES, 

iENATn'R, FROM ILLINOl.' 



iASIS OF REPRESEJ^TJ.TIOX. 899 

meet the taunt of Northern demagogues that I would force suffrage 
upon Xorth Carolina, and Tennessee, and Delaware, while I had 
not the courage to prescribe it for our own free States. Sir, it 
will be the crime of the century if now, having the power, as we 
clearly have, we lack the nerve to do the work that is given us 
to do. 

" Let me say to my Republican friends, you are too late. You 
have gone too far to recede nmv. Four million people, one-seventh 
of your whole population, you have set free. Will you start back 
appalled at the enchantment your own wand has called up ? The 
sequences of your own teachings are upon you. As for me, I 
start not back appalled when universal suffrage confronts me. 
When the bloody ghost of slavery rises, I say, ' Shake your gory 
locks at me ; I did it.' I accept the situation. I fight not against 
the logic of events or the decrees of Providence. I expected it, 
sir, and I meet it half way. I am for universal suffrage. I bid 
it 'All hail!' 'All hail!' 

" Four million people set free ! What will protect them ? The 
ballot. What alone will give us a peaceful and harmonious South? 
The ballot to all. What will quench the fires of discord, give us 
back all the States, a restored Union, and make us one people? 
The ballot, and that alone. Is there no other way ? None other 
under the sun. There is no other salvation. 

" The ballot will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our 
troubles. It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look 
and live. It will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar 
of fire by night. It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, 
and across Jordan's stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy 
land. Sir, the ballot is the freedman's Moses. So far as man is 
concerned, I might say that ISIr. Lincoln was the ISIoses of the 
freedmen ; but whoever shall be the truest friend of human free- 
dom, whoever shall write his name highest upon the horizon of 
public vision as the friend of human liberty, that man — and I 
hope it may be the present President of the United States — will 
be the Joshua to lead the- people into the land of deliverance." 

Mr. Yates maintained that for the exercise of the right of 
suffrage there should be no test of intelligence, wealth, rank or 
race. To bring the people up to the proper standard, the ballot 
itself was " the greatest educator." He said : " Let a man have 
an interest in the Government, a voice as to the men and measures 



400 TEE THIRTY-MIJfTH COJVGBESS. 

by which his taxes, his property, his life, and his reputation shall 
be determined, and there will be a stimulus to education for 
that man. 

" As the elective franchise has been extended in this country, 
we have seen education become more universal. Look through- 
out all our Northern States at our schools and colleges, our acad- 
emies of learning, our associations, the pulpit, the press, and the 
numerous agencies for the promotion of intelligence, all the inev- 
* itable offspring of our free institutions. Here is the high train- 
ing which inspires the eloquence of the Senate, the wisdom of 
the cabinet, the address of the dijjlomatist, and which has de- 
veloped and brought to light that intelligent and energetic mind 
which has elevated the character and contributed to the prosper- 
ity of the country. It is the ballot which is the stimulus to im- 
provement, which fires the heart of youthful ambition, which 
stimulates honorable aspiration, which penetrates the thick shades 
of the forest, and takes the poor rail-splitter by the hand and 
points him to the shining height of human achievement, or which 
goes into the- log hut of the tailor boy and opens to him the 
avenue of the presidential mansion." 

Mr. Yates then declared his confidence in the triumph of the 
principle of universal suffrage : " It is my conscientious conviction 
that if every Senator on this floor, and every Representative in 
the other House, and the President of the United States, should, 
with united voices, attempt to oppose this grand consummation 
of universal equality, they will fail. It is too late for that. You 
may go to the head-waters of the Mississippi and turn off the 
little rivulets, but you can not go to the mouth, after it has col- 
lected its waters from a thousand rivers, and with accumulated 
volume is pouring its foaming waters into the Gulf, and say, 
'Thus far shalt thou go and no further.' 

"It is too late to change the tide of human progress. The 
enlightened convictions of the masses, wrought by the thorough 
discussions of thirty years, and consecrated by the baptism of 
precious blood, can not now be changed. The hand of a higher 
power than man's is in this revolution, and it will not move 
backward. It is of no use to fight against destiny. God, not 
man, created men equal. Deep laid in the solid foundations of 
God's eternal throne, the principle of equality is established, in- 
destructible and immortal. 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATI0:N'. 401 

" Senators, sixty centuries of the past are looking down upon 
you. All the centuries of the future are calling upon you. Lib- 
erty, struggling amid the rise and wrecks of empires in the past, 
and yet to struggle for life in all the nations, of the world, con- 
jures you to seize this great opportunity which the providence of 
Almighty God has placed in your hands to bless the world and 
make your names immortal, to carry to full and triumphant con- 
summation the great work begun by your fathers, and thus lay 
permanently, solidly, and immovably, the cap-stone upon the 
pyramid of human liberty." 

On the 21st of February, the proposed amendment being again 
before the Senate, Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, delivered an 
elaborate speech in opposition to the measure. He had previously 
refrained from speech-making, supposing that "while the pas- 
sions of the country were inflamed by the war, reason could not be 
heard." He regretted that questions pertaining to the war still 
occupied the attention of Congress to the exclusion of those con- 
nected with economy, revenue, finance, ordinary legislation, and 
the administration of justice — questions which require intel- 
ligence, investigation, labor, and the habits of the student. As 
an argument against changing the basis of representation as it 
existed, Mr. Buckalew gave statistical details, showing the various 
ratios of representation in the Senate, as possessed respectively by 
the East, West and South. He maintained that New England 
had too great a preponderance of power in the Senate, both as to 
membership and the chairmanships of committees. "While," 
said he, " the population of the East is less than one-seventh of 
the population of the States represented in the Senate, she has 
the chairmanships of one-third of the committees. The chair- 
manship of a committee is a position of much influence and 
power. The several distinguished gentlemen holding that posi- 
tion have virtual control over the transaction of business, both 
in committee and in the Senate." 

Mr. Buckalew thus presented the effect of restoration of repre- 
sentation to the Southern States upon the relative position of 
New England : " Twenty-two Senators from the Southern States 
and two from Colorado — being double the number of those from 
the East — would reduce the importance of the latter in the Senate 
and remit her back to the condition in which she stood in her 
relations to the Union before the war. True, she would even 
26 



402 THE THIRTY-JYIJ^TE COJVGBESS. 

then possess much more than her proportion • of weight in the 
Senate, regard being had to her population, but she would no 
lono-er dominate or control the Government of the United States." 

JNIr. Buckalew argued at some length that representation should 
continue to be based upon population. He thought that the two- 
fifths added to the representative pojiulation in the South by the 
abolition of slavery would be counterbalanced by the mortality 
of the slave population since the outbreak of the war. He then 
presented the folloAving objections to " any propositions of amend- 
ments at this time by Congress : " 

" 1. Eleven States are unrepresented in the Senate and House. 
They are not heard in debate which may affect their interests and 
welfare in all future time. 

" 2. Any amendment made at this time will be a partisan 
amendment. 

" 3. The members of this Congress were not chosen with refer- 
ence to the subject of constitutional amendment. 

"4. Whatever amendments are now proposed by Congress are 
to be submitted to Legislatures, and not to popular conventions in 
the States ; and most of those Legislatures are to be the ones now 
in session. 

"5. In submitting amendments at this time, we invite a dis- 
pute upon the question of the degree of legislative assent neces- 
sary to their adoption. If ratified by the Legislatures of less than 
three-fourths of all the States, their validity will be denied, and 
their enforcement resisted." 

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, replied to Mr. Buckalew's im- 
putations against New England. " The Senator gave us to un- 
derstand that he had not wasted reason, thought, and culture upon 
the stormy passions engendered by the war, but now, when reason 
had resumed her empire, he had come forth to instruct his 
country. 

"The Senators from New England, unlike the Senator from 
Pennsylvania, remained not silent during the great civil war 
through which the nation has passed. They have spoken ; they 
have spoken for the unity of their country and the freedom of all 
men. They have spoken for their country, their whole country, 
and for the rights of all its people of every race. Their past is 
•secure, and the imputations of the Senator from Pennsylvania 
will pass harmless by them. 



BASIS OF REPRESEJ^TATIOjY. 403 

" Wlien the Constitution was formed, New England had eight 
of the twenty-six Senators — nearly one-third of the body ; now 
she has twelve of the seventy-two Senators — one-sixth of the 
body. Her power is diminishing in this body and will continue 
to diminish. When the Constitution was adopted, quite as great 
inequalities existed among the States as now. The illustrious 
statesmen who framed the Constitution knew and recognized that 
fact ; they based the Senate upon the States, and upon the equality 
of the States. They were so determined in that policy of equal 
State representation in the Senate that they provided that the 
Constitution should never be amended in that respect without the 
consent of every State. 

" The Senator suggests that the Senators from New England 
are actuated by local interests and love of power in their action 
regarding the admission of the Representatives of the rebel States. 
Nothing can be more unjust to those Senators. It is without the 
shadow of fairness or justice, or the semblance of truth. I can 
say before God that I am actuated by no local interests, no love 
of power, in opposing the immediate and unconditional admission 
of the rebel States into these chambers ; and I know my associ- 
ates from New England too well to believe for a moment that 
they are actuated by interest or the love of power. Thousands 
of millions of money have been expended, and hundreds of thou- 
sands of brave men have bled for the unity and liberty of the 
repubHc. I desire — my associates from New England desire — to 
see these vacant chairs filled at an early day by the Representatives 
of the States that rebelled and rushed into civil war. We will 
welcome them here ; but before they come it is of vital importance 
to the country, to the people of all sections, to the interests of all, 
that all disturbing questions should be forever adjusted, and so 
adjusted as never again to disturb the unity and peace of the 
country. It is now the time to settle forever all matters that can 
cause estrangement and sectional agitations and divisions in the 
future. Nothing should be left to bring dissensions, and, it may 
be, civil war again upon our country. The blood poured out to 
suppress the rebellion must not be shed in vain." 

Prominent Republican Senators bringing earnest opposition to 
bear against the proposed constitutional amendment, and a senti- 
ment evidently gaining ground that it did not meet the require- 
ments of the case, caused its friends to urge it with less zeal than 



404 ' THE THIRTY-iN-IJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

had at first characterized them. Meanwhile, other important 
propositions coming up- from the Committee of Fifteen, which 
occupied the attention of the Senate, as detailed in a subsequent 
chapter, the subject of changing the basis of representation was 
allowed to lie over for nearly a fortnight. 

On the 5th of March, the subject being resumed, Mr. Pomeroy 
addressed the Senate. He feared that the nation was not ready 
to adopt a constitutional amendment such as the necessities of the 
country required. "This nation," said he, "although severely 
disciplined, has not yet reached" the point of giving to all men 
their rights by a suffrage amendment ; three-fourths of the States 
are not ready. And any patchwork, any 'step toward it' (as 
said the chairman of the committee) which does not reach it, I 
fear to take, because but one opportunity will ever be afforded us 
to step at all ; and lost opportunities are seldom repeated." 

Mr. Pomeroy did not think the case was without remedy, 
however, since " the last constitutional amendment embraced all, 
gave the most ample powers, even if they did not exist before; 
for, after having secured the freedom of all men wherever the old 
flag floats, it provided that Congress might 'secure' the same by 
' appropriate legislation.' 

" What more could it have said ? And who are better judges 
of appropriate legislation than the very men who first passed the 
amendment and provided for this very case ? 

" Sir, what is ' appropriate legislation ' on the subject, namely, 
securing the freedom of all men ? It can be nothing less than 
throwing about all men the essential safeguards of the Constitu- 
tion. The 'right to bear arms' is not plainer taught or more 
efiicient than the right to carry ballots. And if appropriate 
legislation will secure the one, so can it also the other. And if 
both are necessary, and provided for in the Constitution as now 
amended, why, then, let us close the question of congressional 
legislation. 

" Let us not take counsel of our own fears, but of our hopes ; 
not of our enemies, but of our friends. By all the memories 
which cluster about the pathway in which we have been led ; by 
all the sacrifices, suffering, blood, and tears of the conflict ; by all 
the hopes of a freed country and a disenthralled race; yea, as a 
legacy for mankind, let us now secure a free representative re- 
public, based upon impartial suffi-age and that human equality 



BASIS OF EETRESEKTATIOK. 405 

made clear in the Declaration of Independence. To this enter- 
tainment let us invite our countrymen and all nations, committing 
our work, when done, to the verdict of posterity and the blessing 
of Almighty God." 

On the day following, Mr. Saulsbury took the floor. His 
speech, ostensibly against the pending measure, was a palliation 
of the conduct of the Southern States, and a plea for their right 
of being admitted to representation in Congress. All that the 
Senator said directly upon the subject under discussion was con- 
tained in the following paragraph : 

" Now, suppose your constitutional amendment {)asses. If it 
passes, it ought to meet with the respect of some body. If this 
constitutioual amendment shall be presented to the States who 
are now represented in Congress, and shall be adopted by simply 
three-fourths of those States, is there any body that will have the 
least respect for it ? Then svippose you could go with the bayonet — 
which I thiuk now, under the brighter dawn of a better day 
which we begin to realize, you are not going to have the liberty 
to do — suppose you were to go with the bayonet and present it 
to the other eleven States, and they, acting under duress, not as 
free agents and as free men, could get some people in their section 
so miserable and poor in spirit and craven in soul as to vote to 
adopt in their Legislatures such an amendment, would it com- 
mand the respect of any body in this land ? Not at all. Open 
your doors, sir ; admit the Representatives of the Southern States 
to seats in this body; require no miserable degrading oath of 
them ; administer to them the very oath that you first took when 
you entered this body, and the only oath that the Constitution 
of the United States requires, and the only oath which Congress 
has any right to exact, an oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States ; and then, if you think your Constitution is defect- 
ive, if you think it needs further amendment, or if you have not 
sufficiently exhausted your bowels of mercy and love and kind- 
ness toward your sable friends whose shadows darken this gallery 
every day, submit your amendments to the States represented in 
the Congress of the United States; and if they choose, acting 
freely as citizens of their States, to agree to your amendments, it 
will command the respect of themselves, but still it will not com- 
mand mine. I should despise a people who would voluntarily 
assume so degrading a position." 



40G THE THIRTY-KIJ^TE COJfGBESS. 

On the 7tli of INIarch, Mr. Sumner occupied the attention of 
the Senate for three hours, with a second speech in opposition to 
the proposed constitutional amendment. He used very strong 
lano-uage to express his abhorrence of the proposition : " It re- 
minds me of that leg of mutton served for dinner on the road 
from London to Oxford, which Dr. Johnson, with characteristic 
energy, described ^ as bad as bad could be, ill-fed, ill-killed, ill- 
kept, and ill-dressed.' So this compromise — I adopt the saying 
of an eminent friend, who insists that it can not be called an 
' amendment,' but rather a ' detriment ' to the Constitution — is as 
bad as bad can be ; and even for its avowed purpose it is uncertain, 
loose, cracked, and rickety. Regarding it as a proposition from 
Congress to meet the unparalleled exigencies of the present hour, 
it is no better than the' muscipular abortion' sent into the world 
by the 'parturient mountain.' But it is only when we look at 
the chance of good from it that this proposition is ' muscipular.' 
Regarding it in every other aspect it is infinite, inasmuch as it 
makes the Constitution a well-spring of insupportable thralldom, 
and once more lifts the sluices of blood destined to run until it 
comes to the horse's bridle. Adopt it, and you will put millions 
of fellow-citizens under the ban of excommunication; you will 
hand them over to a new anathema maranatha; you will declare 
that they have no political rights ' which white men are bound to 
respect,' thus repeating in a new form that abomination which 
has blackened the name of Taney. Adopt it, and you will stim- 
ulate anew the war of race upon race. Slavery itself was a war 
of race upon race, and this is only a new form of this terrible 
war. The proposition is as hardy as it is gigantic; for it takes 
no account of the moral sense of mankind, which is the same as 
if in rearing a monument we took no account of the law of grav- 
itation. It is the paragon and master-piece of ingratitude, show- 
ing more than any other act of history what is so often charged 
and we so fondly deny, that republics are ungrateful. The 
freedmen ask for bread, and you send them a stone. With 
piteous voice they ask for protection. You thrust them back 
unprotected into the cruel den of their former masters. Such an 
attempt, thus bad as bad can be, thus abortive for all good, thus 
perilous, thus pregnant with a war of race upon race, thus 
shocking to the moral sense, and thus treacherous to those whom 
we are bound to protect, can not be otherwise than shameful. 



BASIS OF REPBESEJ^TATIOJf. 407 

Adopt it, and you will cover the country with dishonor. Adopt 
it, and you will fix a stigma upon the very name of republic. 
As to the imagination, there are mountains of light, so are there 
mountains of darkness ; and this is one of them. It is the very 
Koh-i-noor of blackness. Adopt this proposition, and you will 
be little better than the foul Harpies who defiled the feast that 
was spread. The Constitution is the feast spread for our country, 
and you are now hurrying to drop into its text a political ob- 
scenity, and to spread on its page a disgusting ordure, 

" ' Defiling all you find, 
And parting leave a loathsome stench behind.' " 

Having presented his objections to the pending proposition, at 
great length, he summed them up as follows : " You have seen, 
first, how this proposition carries into the Constitution itself the 
idea of Inequality of Rights, thus defiling that unspotted text ; 
secondly, how it is an express sanction of the acknowledged 
tyranny of taxation without representation ; thirdly, how it is a 
concession to State Rights at a moment when we are recovering 
from a terrible war waged against us in the name of State Rights ; 
fourthly, how it is the constitutional recognition of an oligarchy, 
aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color ; fifthly, how it 
petrifies in the Constitution the wretched pretensions of a white 
man's government ; sixthly, how it assumes what is false in con- 
stitutional law, that color can be a ' qualification ' for an elector ; 
seventhly, how it positively ties the hands of Congress in fixing 
the meaning of a republican government, so that, under the guar- 
antee clause, it will be constrained to recognize an oligarchy, aris- 
tocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, together with the 
tyranny of taxation without representation, as not inconsistent with 
such a government; eighthly, how it positively ties the hands of 
Congress in completing and consummating the abolition of slaver}^- 
according to the second clause of the constitutional amendment, 
60 that it can not, for this purpose, interfere with the denial of 
the elective franchise on account of color; ninthly, how it in- 
stalls recent rebels in permanent power over loyal citizens ; and, 
tenthly, how it shows forth, in unmistakable character, as a 
compromise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent, and 
utterly shameful of any in our history. All this you have seen, 
with pain and sorrow, I trust. Who that is moved to sympathy 



408 TEE TEIRTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

for his fellow-mau can listen to the story without indignation? 
Who that has not lost the power of reason can fail to see the 
cruel wrong?" 

Mr. Doolittle mentioned some facts which he thought would 
prove the apprehension of an increase of the basis of represen- 
tation in the South to be without foundation. " The destruc- 
tion of the population," said he, " both white and black, during 
the civil war, has been most enormous. Of the white popula- 
tion, there were in those States in 1860, of white males over 
twenty years of age, about one million sis hundred thousand. 
Nearly one-thu-d of that white population over twenty years of 
age has perished. The actual destruction of the black popula- 
tion since 1860 has been at least twenty -five per cent, of the 
whole popul-ation. The population of the South has been so 
destroyed and wasted and enfeebled in consequence of this war, 
that I do not for one, I confess, feel those apprehensions which 
some entertain that, if they are admitted to representation under 
the Constitution just as it stands, they will have any increase 
of Representatives. My opinion is, that after the next census 
their representation will be diminished unless emigration from 
the North or from Europe shall fill up their population and 
increase it so as to entitle it to an increased representation." 

Mr. Doolittle argued that the amendment was capable of being 
evaded by a State disposed to disfranchise colored pien : "I do 
not see," said he, " that there is any thing in the resolution which 
would prevent South Carolina or any other State from passing a 
law that any person who was born free, or whose ancestors were 
free, should exercise the elective franchise, and none others. That 
would exclude the whole of the colored population, and yet would 
leave the State to have its full representation. There is nothing 
which would prevent the State of South Carolina or any other 
State from saying that only those persons who had served in the 
military service, and their descendants, should exercise the elective 
franchise. That would exclude" the colored population, and the 
Union population, too, if they refused to serve in the army." 

Mr. Doolittle closed his remarks by advocating an amendment 
basing representation upon actual voters under State laws. 

Mr. Morrill, of Maine, addressed the Senate in support of 
the proposition to amend the Constitution. He said: "Some 
amendment is rendered absolutely necessary, unless the American 



BASIS OF REPRESEMTJ.TIOM. 409 

Constitution is to give to the nation the expression of utterly 
contradictory sentiments, saying invokmtary servitude no longer 
exists, in one portion of it ; in another, bearing on its front in 
marked contrast, that three-fifths only of the 'other persons' are 
to still constitute the basis of representation." 

He recalled a time not far remote when amendments of the 
Constitution were adopted by those who now oppose any alter- 
ation of the fundamental law : " I do not forget," said he, " that 
wdthin the last five years a class of statesmen and politicians, 
who now resist all propositions for an amendment of the Con- 
stitution, here and elsewhere urged and demanded amendments 
of the Constitution of the nation. What were the circumstances 
then ? Several States threatened to dissolve this Union ; several 
States had taken an attitude hostile to the Government of the 
country. They demanded the extension, the protection, ami the 
perpetuation of slavery; and upon that question the country 
was divided. Then amendments to the Constitution were pro- 
posed without number here, elsewhere, and every-where. Amend- 
ments to the Constitution seemed to be the order of the day. To 
what end, and for what purpose? To increase the power in the 
hands of the few who wielded the political power in those States, 
and who were demanding it. 

Referring to an argument presented by the Senator from 
Wisconsin, Mr. Morrill remarked: "But yesterday we had an 
additional reason given why this amendment should not be 
adopted ; and that was that it was wholly unnecessary, because, 
it was said, by the events which were transpiring in the coun- 
try in regard to the recent slave population, there need be no 
apprehension of excess of representation based on the whole 
'numbers* instead of three-fifths, from the important fact that 
they were passing away. If I gather the force of that argument, 
it is this: we are to base no legislation and no action upon the 
idea that thi* race, recently slave, now free, is part and parcel 
of the American people, the object of our care, solicitude, and 
protection. They are passing away — dying; let them be repre- 
sented as slaves now, and let them never enter into the basis 
hereafter of the representative system. Sir, that is the old 
argument — an argument worthy of another period than this. 
Our people have been an inexorable people, in ^ome respects, in 
regard to the races that have been within their power. In the 



lf.10 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

march of our civilization across the continent, the iron heel of 
that civilization has rested upon the .Indian, and he is passing 
away. We seem to contemplate the probable extinction of the 
Indians from our limits \vith composure. He is a nomad ; he 
is a savage ; he is a barbarian ; he is not within our morals or 
our code of law; he is not within the pale of the Constitution, 
but flits upon the verge of it, outside our protection, the subject 
of our caprices, and sometimes, I think, of our avarice. And, 
now, if any consequence is to be attached to the remark of the 
honorable Senator from "Wisconsin []\Ir. Doolittle] yesterday, this 
' inferior race ' is not to be the subject of our solicitude. They, 
too, are passing away; it is not worth while to change your 
Constitution in regard to them. Let them be represented as two- 
fifths slaves on the old basis until they shall have perished, and 
then your Constitution will need no amendment. The laws of 
a fearful antagonism of superior and inferior races are expected 
to accomplish what, if American statesmanship does not incite, 
it contemplates with apparent satisfaction." 

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, profoundly regretted to see in- 
dications that the amendment was doomed to defeat. He said : 
"My heart, my conscience, and my judgment approve of this 
amendment, and I support it without qualification or reservation. 
I approve of the purpose for which it is introduced. I approve 
it because I believe it would sweep the loyal States by an im- 
mense majority ; that no public man could stand before the people 
of the loyal States in opposition to it, or oppose it with any force 
whatever. I approve it because I believe if it were put in the 
Constitution every black man in America, before five years could 
pass, would be enfranchised and weaponed -with the ballot for the 
protection of life, liberty, and property." 

Keferring to die opposition brought to bear against the measure 
by his colleague, Mr. Wilson said : " We are also told that it is 
immoral and indecent, an offense to reason and "to conscience. 
Sir, this measure came into Congress with the sanction of the 
Committee on Reconstruction, composed as it is of men of indi- 
vidual honor and personal character, and as true to the cause of 
the colored race as any other men here or elsewhere. It comes 
to the Senate by an overwhelming vote of the House of Repre- 
sentatives. It i» sustained by ninety-nine out of every hundred 
of the public journals that brought the present Administration 



BASIS OF *BEPEESEJ^TATIOM. 4^1 

into power, and were it submitted to the American i^eoplc, it 
would, I am quite sure, be sustained by men in the loyal States 
who believe that the soldier who fought the battles of the re- 
public is the equal of the traitor who fought against the country. 
I see no compromise in it, no surrender in it, no defilement of 
the Constitution in it, no implication that can be drawn from it 
against the rights or interests of the colored race. On the con- 
trary, I believe the black men, from the Potomac to the Kio 
Grande, would go for it and rejoice to see it adopted." 

Mr. Wilson described the results that would follow the adop- 
tion of this amendment. " Being incorporated in the Constitu- 
tion, the practical effect would be this, and only this : it would 
raise up a party in every one of these States immediately in favor 
of the enfranchisement of the colored race. That party might 
be animated and influenced by the love of power, by pride, and 
by ambition. These men might begin the contest, for they would 
not like to yield the power of their States in Congress; they 
might begin the battle animated by no high and lofty motives ; 
but as soon as the discussion commenced, it would address itself 
to the reason, to the heart, and to the conscience of the people. 
The advocates of negro enfranchisement would themselves speed- 
ily grow up to believe in the justice, equity, and right of giving 
the ballot to the black men. There would be discussion o» every 
square mile of the rebel States. Appeals would be made to their 
pride, to their ambition, to their justice, to their love of fair play, 
to their equity ; all the interests and passions, and all the loftier 
motives that can sway, control, and influence men, would impel 
them to action. They would cooperate with the friends of free- 
dom throughout the country ; would seek their counsel and aid. 
They would be the left wing of the great army of freedom, of 
elevation, and improvement in the countr}\ "We would give them 
our influence, our voices, and our aid in fighting the battle of 
enfranchisement. They would have the support and the prayers 
of the poor black men of the South ; and before five years had 
passed away, there would not be a rebel State that did not en- 
franchise the bondman." 

Eefcrring to the policy of " enlightened Christian States," in 
refusing the right of suffrage to the negro, Mr. Wilson said: 
"After all the fidelity and heroic conduct of these men, prejudice, 
party spirit, and conservatism, and all that is base and mean on 



41^ THE THIRTY-JfUfTlt COJTGRESS. 

earth, combine to tleny the right of suifrage to the brave soldier 
of the republic. God alone can forgive such meanness ; humanity- 
can not. After what has taken place, is taking place, I can not 
hope that the constitutional amendment projjosed by the Senator 
from Missouri will receive a majority of three-fourths of the votes 
of the States. I, therefore, can not risk the cause of an emanci- 
pated race upon it. In the present condition of the nation we 
must aim at practical results, not to establish political theories, 
however beautiful and alluring they may be." 
• It w^as the understanding of the Senate that the discussion 
would close and the vote would be taken on the 9th of March. 
On that day Mr. Fessenden took the floor in reply to objections 
urged by those who had previously spoken. In reply to the ob- 
jection that the advocates of this measure were wrong in attempting 
to accomplish by indirection that which they could not accomplish 
directly, Mr. Fessenden said : " If negro suffrage can be secured 
by the indirect action of an amendment of the Constitution which 
appeals to the interest of those who have hitherto been and who 
are yet probably the ruling class among whom this large popula- 
tion is situated, and with whom they live, it will be far better 
than to run the risk of all the difficulties that might arise from 
a forcible imposition, which would create ill-feeling, generate dis- 
cord, a;id produce, perhaps undying animosities." 

To the objection urged by Mr. Hendricks, that it was intended 
for a party purpose, Mr. Fessenden replied : " Has he any right 
to attack the motives of those who support it ? Must it necessa- 
rily be attended with benefit to a particular party? If so, it is 
necessarily attended with injury to another party, of which the 
honorable Senator is a prominent member ; and it would as well 
become me to say that his opposition to it is for party purposes 
and for party objects as it became him to say that its introduction 
and its support were intended for party purposes. It is well 
known here and out of this Senate that the honorable Senator 
from Indiana is a gentleman who never, in any of his addresses 
here, says any thing that is in the slightest degree calculated to 
effect a party purpose, and has so little of that party feeling 
which presses itself upon other men as to be hardly suspected of 
being a party man at all." [Laughter.] 

INIr. Fessenden thus replied to the objections of two opponent? 
of the measure : " The Senator [Mr. Hendricks] objected to this 



BASIS OF REPRESEJfTATIOJf. 413 

measure upon another ground, and that was, that in one sense it 
was intended as a punishment, and that was wrong ; and in an- 
other sense it was what he called a bribe, a reward, and that was 
wrong. If he considers it a punishment, he differs very much 
from his leading associate on this question, the honorable Senator 
from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] for he does not consider it a 
punishment at all. The Senatcfr from Massachusetts says there 
is nothing punitive in it. On the contrary, it is a reward to these 
States; it is conferring power upon them; it is strengthening 
power in the hands of the whites of the South, and only oppress- 
ing the colored race. Behold how doctors disagree ! They ope- 
rate upon the same patient, and are operating at the same time, 
with different remedies and in different directions. 

" Suppose it is a punishment, and suppose it is a bribe, a re- 
ward ; it does not differ very much from the principle upon which 
all criminal legislation is founded, to say the least of it. We 
punish men when they do wrong. I never heard that it was an 
objection to legislation that it punished those who perpetrate a 
wrong. I never heard that it was an objection to legislation that 
it held out rewards to those who did right." 

Referring to Mr. Buckalew's argument, Mr. Fessenden re- 
marked : " Eight out of sixteen pages of his speech were devoted 
to abuse of New England, and to showing that New England had 
too much power, and that it ought to be abridged in some way. 
" He closed those remarks by saying (for which I was very much 
obliged to him) that he did not despise New England. We are 
happy to know it. I will say to him that New England does 
not, despise him that I am aware of. [Laughter.] I am not 
aware that it is really affected in any degree by the elaborate at- 
tack of eight pages which he delivered against New England on 
that occasion, and which he thought were views so important that 
he could not be justified if he failed to give them utterance." 

Of Mr. Sumner's part in the debate, Mr. Fessenden said : " On 
this subject I think he has occupied about eight or nine hours of 
the time of the Senate, and on the last occasion, while saying that 
principles were to be considered, he has undertaken to designate 
the character of this proposed amendment. I have already stated 
who the men were who were in favor of it. What does the Sen- 
ator call it? I have chosen a few, and but a few, flowers of 
rhetoric from the speech of the honcrrable Senator : ^ Compromise 



UJj. THE TEIRTY-KIKTR COKGEESS. 

of human rights,' ' violating the national faith,' ' dishonoring the 
name of there public,' ' bad mutton,' ^ new museipular abortion,' 
' a new anathema maranatha,' ' abomination,' ' paragon and mas- 
terpiece of ingratitude,' 'abortive for all good,' 'shocking to the 
moral sense,' ' the very Koh-i-noor of blackness,' ' essential un- 
cleanliness,' ' disgusting ordure,' ' loathsome stench ;' and the men 
who support it, if they pass it, will be ' Harpies,' ' Pontius Pilate, 
with Judas Iscariot on his back.' 

" The Senator from Massachusetts makes several points against 
this proposition, to which my answer is the same. His first point 
is, that it recognizes ' the idea of inequality of rights founded on 
race or color.' I deny in toto the correctness, or even*the plausi- 
bility, to a man of sense, any point that he has raised on the 
subject. There is not one of them that Is tenable ; and more 
than that, there is not one of them but what is just as tenable 
against the proposition he is in favor of to found representation 
on voters as this. What lawyer in the world ever heard that a 
denial Is an admission? What la^vyer ever heard that a penalty 
Is a permission ? By this proposition, we say simply this : ' If, 
In the exercise of the power that you have under the Constitu- 
tion, you make an Inequality of rights, then you are to suffer 
such and such consequences.' What sane man could ever pretend 
that that was saying, ' Make an Inequality of rights and we will 
sanction It?' We do not deny — nobody can deny — that the power 
may be thus exercised. What we say by this amendment is, ' If 
you attempt to exercise it In this wrongful way, you create an 
inequality of rights ; and if you do create an inequality of rights' 
— not we, but you — ' If you undertake to do it under the pQwer 
which exists in the Constitution, then the consequence follows 
that you are punished by a loss of representation.' That is all 
that is In it." 

Having replied to the most of Mr. Sumner's objections In 
order, Mr. Fessenden said : " The last point of the Senator is, 
that this proposition Is ' a compromise of human rights, the most 
immoral, indecent, and utterly shameful in our history.' 

" Mr. President, I stand rebuked, but I do not feel so bad as 
I might. The Committee of Fifteen, the friends and associates 
of the .honorable Senator, stand rebuked. More than two-thirds 
of the House of Representatives and a large majority of this 
body, all the political friends and associates of the Senator, stand 



BASIS OF BEPBESEJ^TATIOJT. 415 

charged with proposing a compromise of human rights the most 
immoral, indecent, and shameful in our history ! All I can say 
with regard to that is, that neither on its face, in its effect, 
nor in its intention is it any compromise. None such was 
dreamed of." 

Mr. Fessenden thus described the remarkable combination of 
Senators opposing the amendment : " I can not close, however, 
without saying how amusing seems to me the character of tlie 
opposition to this joint resolution. That opposition is composed 
of men of all shades of opinion. The Democrats on the other 
side of the House oppose it because they say it is unjust to the 
Southern States ; my honorable friends who have been some time 
with us are opposed to it because — I do not know why, except 
that the President is opposed to it, and I believe that is the 
ground; my honorable friend from Massachusetts objects because 
it is unjust to the negro. Why, sir, just imagine all the gen- 
tlemen opposed to this resolution met in caucus together, and 
looking around at each other, would there not be a smile on all 
their faces to see what company they had fallen into? I think 
Senators would be surprised to find themselves there, and, like 
the countryman looking at the reel in the bottle, they would 
consider how the devil they did get there. • [Laughter.] It 
would be a very strange meeting; and yet they are all against 
this proposition." 

After a running debate between several Senators, the vote 
was taken upon the substitute proposed by Mr. Henderson as 
a constitutional amendment, viz. : " No State, in prescribing the 
qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate 
against any person on account of color or race." The amendment 
was lost — yeas, 10 ; nays, 37. The question was then taken on 
Mr. Sumner's substitute, which was simply a joint resolution 
providing ' there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or 
monopoly invested with peculiar privileges, and no denial of 
rights, civil or political, on account of color or race, anywhere 
within the United States." This resolution was lost — yeas, 8; 
nays, 39. The vote was then taken on the amendment proposed 
by Mr. Yates, providing that no State shall make or enforce any 
distinction between citizens of the United States on account of 
race or color, and that all citizens shall hereafter be protected in 
the exercise of all civil and political rights, including the right 



416 THE TEIETY-KIKTR COJfGRESS. 

of suffraf^e. This amendment was lost — yeas, 7 ; nays, 38. The 
vote was then taken upon the original amendment as reported by 
the joint Committee of Fifteen. The following was the result : 

Yeas— ^lessrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Fes- 
senden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, McDou- 
gall, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Trumbull, 
Wade, Williams, and Wilson— 25. 

Xays — Messrs. Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, 
Henderson, Hendricks, Johnson, Lane of Kansas, Nesmith, Norton, Pomeroy, 
Riddle, Saulsbury, Stewart, Stockton, Sumner, Van Winkle, Willey, and 
Yates— 22. 

Absext — ]\Iessrs. Foot, Howard, and Wright — 3. 

Two thirds of the Senators not having voted for the joint 
resolution, it was lost. The defeat of the proposed constitutional 
amendment was accomplished by the combination of five " Rad- 
ical" Senators with six "Conservatives," elected as Republicans, 
whose vote, added to the regular Democratic strength, prevented 
its adoption by the required constitutional majority of two-thirds. 

The advocates of constitutional reform, though foiled in this 
attempt, were not disheartened. Their defeat taught them the 
important lesson that pet measures and favorite theories must be 
abandoned or modified in order to secure the adoption of some 
constitutional amendment to obviate difficulties of which all felt 
and acknowledged the existence. 

Meanwhile other measures, designed to lead to the great end of 
reconstruction, were demanding and receiving the consideration 
of Congress. 



BEPBESEJfTATIOJ^. 417 



CHAPTER XVI. 

REPRESENTATION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
CONCTJERENT ReSOLUTIOX— A " VeNOSIOUS FiGHT "—PASSAGE IN THE HoUSE 

The Resoltjtiox in tue Senate— "A Political Wrangle" Deprecated— 
Importance op the Question — "A Straw in a Storm" — ^Policy op the 
President — Conversation between two Senators — Mr. Nye's Advice 
to Rebels— "A Dangerous Power"— "Was Mr. Wade once a Seces- 
sionist?" — Garrett Davis' Programme for the President — "Useless 
YET Mischievous" — The Great Question Settled. 

IT was understood when the Committee of Fifteen introduced 
the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment 
relating to the basis of representation, that this was only one 
of a series of measures which they thought essential to the work 
of reconstruction, and which they designed to propose at a proper 
time. 

In pursuance of this plan, on the 20th of February, the day 
after the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and while the 
amendment of the basis of reconstruction was pending in the 
Senate, Mr. Stevens brought before the House, from the Com- 
mittee of Fifteen, a " Concurrent Eesolution concerning the Insur- 
rectionary States," as follows : 

"i?<3 it resolved hy the House of Representatives, (the Senate concurring,) 
That in order to close agitation upon a question which seems likely to dis- 
turb the action of the Government, as well as to quiet the uncertainty 
which is agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which have 
been declared to be in insurrection, no Senator or Representative shall be 
admitted into either branch of Congress from any of said States until Con- 
gress shall have declared such State entitled to such representation." 

After the reading of this resolution, Mr. Grider, of Kentucky, 
a member of the Committee of Fifteen, offered the following 
minority report : 

27 



^8 TE£ THTRTT-XIXTH COXGHESS. 

"Tb* inir."T!rr of ^e Gamminee an Hewmstrucnan, on Ae pan of the 

-e ii&ve directed an inquiry to 
_r State of Tennessee There 
has been & iarze amouni oi evidence taken, some pan of it eondncing to 
shon- that ai some localines occasionalry there have been some irreguiarities 
and temporary disaffeetion : yet the main direction and -WTeight of the testi- 
amikie and comeinsiv? to sho-w thai the greai l>ody of the people 
~ _ite are not onh" lo"^ and iriniiu:. l>tii anxions, to have and main- 
ihaj- aaiicahk- sineere. and patriotic relations "with the General Goverii- 
mem. Sncii i:»einr the staie of the facts, and inasmneh as imder the eensns 
of ISoC' Coniireas passed a lav wiiich -was approved in l>f-S. fxing the ratio 
and apportioning tC' Tenn^ee and aH the other States representation : and 
inasmuiL as Tennessee, disa-ro-wins instcreeuonaiy pnrpises or dislqyaln-. 
las, tinder the ia"W5 and arsanic law of said State, regnlarbr elecisd her 
3nemi»ers and Senators to the Congres of the TTmied Stales, in eonformitT 
■a> the laws and Con sJata on of the ITnited States, and said members are 
here j»g^»HTi£ admission : and JTiaiymniVn as xhe H{^Ti?e l>y the Consiitation is 
me -jndse of tiie eieetion, rsnrms, and qxL_- : its members, con- 

g^(^j»h>^ Aese :&ieis n"nfi prineiples. ve offer ^^- -Z resoitnioiL to-vii : 

•■ Ji.-j^rn--iL Thar tHp State of Tennesee is entitled tc> represen t a ti on in me 
Tiirrv-ninni C _ :-r.d tiie Henresemanres elected from and by said 

State are ier- it-; take their seats therein ttpon being qualified 

by oai&. aeeoxoiii^ ix.- ^vi. 

Mr. Stevens Tbfin ^d: *• Having lieard an ingeoions speech 
upon THHT side of liie quesdon. and ncfi intending to make any 
speecii npon Tm= ade. as I iiope otir mends all mideisiand a 
qnssdon -wmdi lias agiraied nor this body only, bra: other por- 
lians of va& eonuramiiy. I propose to a^ &r the qnesdan. I 
TniTik I mav ^tv vriihonr impropneiy, liar nnti] yesterday tnere 
-was an fgTm«sr invesnirarian into the eondirion of Tennessee, to 
see \rheiher bv acr of Congress ^we could admii that State to a 
eondidan of lepresentadon here, and admit its members to seats 
here : btc snee vesierday liere has arisen a stare of things which 
ihe eommiuse deem pttis ir om of their power to proceed fenher 
v\ilh oiK snrrsndernip a crrsar prinaple; wiihom the loss of all 
dieir dignirv : -wi-hom snrrendering the idghis of this bodv to the 
nsnrpaiion of another power. I call the previous guesdon. 

g^e-- -T ~ — — - n: ':.- bv the Xtemoeiatie minorhy to de- 
ffl!3T th- - „ : 3n bv means of" dilatory motions." 

E.epeaied manane "were made to adjourn, to excuse eenain mem- 
bers frnm vonn£. and to call the House, on all of -which the yeas 
and navs -were called- This ~ parliamentary tactics'' consumed 
nrmv hours. The minoriiy seemed resolved to make the pas- 



BEPRESEMTATIOJf. 4^9 

sage of the resolution a question of physical endurance. In reply- 
to a proposition of Mr. Eldridge, of the minority, that they 
would allow business to proceed if debate should be allowed, Mr. 
Stevens said : " It is simply the return of the rebels of 1861. I sat 
thirty-eight hours under this kind of a fight once, and I have no 
objections to a little of it now. I am ready to sit for forty hours." 

Late in the evening, a member of the minority proposed that 
the House should take a recess for an hour, that the door-keeper 
might have the hall fitted up as a dormitory. From indications, 
he thought such accommodations would be necessary. At length, 
Mr. Eldridge said : " We know our weakness and the strength 
and power of the numbers of the majority. We have not had 
the assistance which we expected from the other side of the 
House in our effort to obtain the privilege of debating the reso- 
lution. We know perfectly well that it has become a question 
of physical endurance. We know perfectly well that we can not 
stand out against the overpowering majority of this House any 
great length of time. We know if the majority will it, the reso- 
lution will pass without debate. We have done all we could. 
AVe therefore yield to that power, and throw the responsibility 
of this most extraordinary, this most revolutionary measure, upor 
the majority of the House." 

To this ]Mr. Stevens answered : " The gentlemen accept their 
situation just as Jeff. Davis did his — because they can not help 
it. [Laughter.] I confess, sir, for so small a number, they have 
made a most venomous fight." 

The vote was then taken upon the concurrent resolution, which 
passed the House — yeas, 109 ; nays, 40. 

The hopes which had arisen in the minds of the minority that 
a considerable number of Eepublicans would permanently sep- 
arate themselves from the party that elected them, and adhere to 
the policy and fortunes of the President, were disappointed. The 
imprudence of the President himself, in making his unfortunate 
speech of the 2 2d of February, -tended to unite the Republicans 
in Congress against his policy, and render fruitless the efforts of 
his new Democratic friends in his favor. 

On the 23d of February, Mr. Fessenden proposed that the 
pending constitutional amendment should give way, to enable the 
Senate to consider the concurrent resolution passed by the House 
concerning the representation of the Southern States. 



4W THE TEIETY-J^IKTR COJ^GRESS. 

Mr. Sherman thought it would be better and wiser to allow 
this matter to Ke over for a few days. He thought it best not to 
press this "declaration of political opinion" while the public 
mind and Senators themselves were more or less affected by sur- 
rounding circumstances. " I think/' said he, " that we ought not 
to postpone all the important business now pending in' Congress 
for the purpose of getting into a political wrangle with the 
President." 

Mr. Eessendeu replied : " The Senator from Ohio says we are 
getting up a political wrangle with the President of the United 
States. When the President of the United States tells Congress 
that it is transcending its proper limits of authority, that it has 
nothing to do in the way of judgment upon the great question of 
reconstructing the rebel States, and Congress assumes to express 
its own sense upon that question, I think it is hardly a proper term 
to apply to such a state of things. I am not aware that there 
has been any effort anywhere to get up a political wrangle or 
engage in a political wrangle with the President. Certainly I 
have not. No man has ever heard me speak of him except in 
terms of respect, in my place here and elsewhere. 

" I am not sensible myself of any excitement that would pre- 
vent my speaking upon this question precisely in the style which 
I deem it deserves. I am not carried away by passion. I have 
reflected, and I am ready to express my opinion upon the great 
question at issue; and the Senator will allow me to say that, in 
my judgment, the sooner the judgment of Congress is expressed, 
the better. 

" He talks about important business to be done by this Con- 
gress. Sir, is there any thing more important than to settle the 
question ^whether the Senate and the House of Representatives 
of the United States have or have not something to say in rela- 
tion to the condition of the late Confederate States, and whether 
it is proper to admit Senators and Representatives from them ? 
If the President is right in his assumption — for the assumption is 
a very clear one — that we have nothing to say, v/e ought to admit 
these men at once, if they come here Avith proper credentials, and 
not keep them waiting outside tbe door." 

Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that trans- 
pired yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not 
to have had some influence upon him, and I think it as wel] 



REPRESEJ^TATIOJ^. 421 

to allow the iufliicncc of those events to pass away. I do not 
wish now myself, nor do I wish any Senator here, to reply to 
what was said yesterday by the President of the United States. 
I would prefer that the Senate of the United States, the only 
legislative body which can deliberate fully and freely without any 
limitation on the right of debate, should deliberate, reflect, and 
act calmly after the excitement of the events of the last two or 
three days has passed off." 

Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked : " If there be passion and 
excitement in the country at this present tinft, I do not hold my- 
self as an individual responsible for any share of it ; and I am 
here to say that if I know myself— and if I do not know myself 
nobody about me knows me — I am as competent to consider this 
particular question to-day as I was the day before yesterday or 
last week, and, so far as my judgment informs me, quite as com- 
petent to consider it as I expect to be next week or the week 
after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote against 
proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because I 
distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of 
my associates about me, I must respectfully Recline, not because I 
care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or an- 
other day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own 
course as individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept 
from the seat of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the 
first magistrate of the nation, or by the lowest and the last mag- 
istrate of the nation." 

The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider 
the concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, 
which had already passed the House of Eepresentatives. 

Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of consid- 
erable length. He presented extracts from the President's speech 
of the day before, in which he had arrayed himself against the 
ricrht of Congress to decide whether a rebel State is in condition 
to be represented. 

Mr. Fessenden considered the pending resolution as " transcend- 
ing in importance the question of the amendment of the Consti- 
tution, which had been under discussion for several days." He 
deemed the resolution necessary now, "in order that Congress 
may assert distinctly its own rights and its own powers ; in order, 
that there may be no mistake anywhere, in the mind of the Ex- 



J^m THE THIBTY-J^IMTH COJfGBESS. 

ecutivc or in the minds of tlie people of this country ; that Con- 
gress, under the circumstances of this case, with this attempted 
limitation of its powers with regard to its own organization, is 
prepared to say to the Executive and to the country, respectfully 
but firmly, over this subject they have, and they mean to exer- 
cise, the piost full and plenary jurisdiction. We will judge for 
ourselves, not only upon credentials and the character of men and 
the position of men, but upon the position of the States which 
sent those men here. In other words, to use the language of the 
President again, whtn the question is to be decided, whether they 
obey the Constitution, whether they have a fitting constitution of 
their own, whether they are loyal, whether they are prepared to 
obey the laws as a preliminary, as the President says it is, to 
their admission, we will say whether those preliminary require- 
ments have been complied with, and not he, and nobody but 
ourselves." 

Mr. Fessenden made an extended argument on the subject of 
reconstruction, affirming that while the people of the rebel States 
had not passed from under the jurisdiction of the United States 
Government, yet having no existence as States with rights in the 
Union and rights to*representation in Congress. " My judgment 
is," said he, " that we hold the power over the whole subject in 
our hands, that it is our duty to hold it in our hands, and to 
regard it as a matter of the most intense interest to the whole 
people, involving the good of the whole people, calling for our 
most careful consideration, and to be adjudged without passion, 
without temi)er, without any of that feeling which may be sup- 
posed to have arisen out of the unexampled state of things 
through which we have passed." 

On the 26tli of February, Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate 
on the pending concurrent resolution. He approved the princi- 
ple but doubted the expediency of now reaffirming it. " I regard 
it," said he, " as a mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inop- 
portune moment; the mere assertion of a naked right which has 
never yet been disputed, and never can be successfully ; a mere 
assertion of a right that we have over and over again asserted. 
My idea is that the true way to assert this power is to exercise it, 
and that it was only necessary for Congress to exercise that power 
in order to meet all these complicated difficulties." 

Mr. Sherman regarded the President's speech as humiliating 



REPRESEJTTATIOJT. 423 

and unworthy of his high office. A part of the speech he char- 
acterized as "the product of rescutinent, hatched by anger and 
passion, and hurled, without reflection, at those he believed 
wished to badger and insult him." 

Mr. Sherman favorcj^l the prompt restoration of Tennessee. 
" I think our first duty," said he, " is at once to prepare a mode 
and manner by which she may be admitted into the Union upon 
such terms and conditions as will make her way back the way of 
pleasantness and peace." 

Of the general question of reconstruction he said : " If I had 
any power in arranging a plan, I would mark the line as broad 
and deep between the loyal people who stood at our side and the 
rebels who fought against us as between heaven and hell." 

"How can you do it?" asked Mr. Howard. 

"Whenever loyal men," replied INIr. Sherman, " present a State 
organization, complying with such terms and conditions and tests 
of loyalty as you may prescribe, and will send here loyal Repre- 
sentatives, I would admit them; and whenever rebels send or 
come here, I would reject them." 

" I fear the storm," said Mi-. Sherman, near the conclusion of 
his speech. "I fear struggles and contentions in these eleven 
States, unless there is some mode by which the local power of 
those States may be put in loyal hands, and by which their voices 
may be heard here in council and in command, in deliberation 
and debate, as of old. They will come back here shorn of their 
undue political power, humbled in their pride, with a conscious- 
ness that one man bred under free institutions is as good, at least, 
as a man bred under slave institutions. I want to see the loyal 
people in the Soutli^ if they are few, trusted ; if they are many, 
give them power. Prescribe your conditions, but let them come 
back into the Union upon such terms as you may prescribe. 
Open the door for them. I hope we may see harmony restored 
in this great Union of ours ; that all these States and all these 
Territories may be here in council for the common good, and that 
at as speedy a moment as is consistent with the public safety." 

Mr. Dixon addressed the Senate in opposition to the concurrent 
resolution, and in favor of the policy of the President. " It is 
my belief," said he, " that what is known as the policy of the 
President for the restoration of the late seceded States in this 
Government is the correct policy. I believe it is the only safe 



4^4 TEE THIBTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

policy." Having been requested to state that policy, Mr. Dixon 
said : " It contemplates a careful, cautious, discriminating admission 
of a loval representation from loyal States and districts in the 
a])]3ropriate House of Congress, by the sejmrate action of each, 
every case to be considered by itself and cjpcided on its own merits. 
It recognizes the right of every loyal State and district to be repre- 
sented by loyal men in Congress. It draws the true line of dis- 
tinction between traitors and true men. It furnishes to the States 
lately in rebellion the strongest possible inducement to loyalty and 
fidelity to the Government. It ' makes treason odious,' by show- 
iuo- that while the traitor and the rebel are excluded from Con- 
gress, the loyal and the faithful are cordially received. It recog- 
nizes and rewards loyalty wherever it is found, and distinguishes, 
as it ought, between a Horace Maynard and a Jefferson Davis." 

Of the purpose expressed in this resolution to " close agitation," 
Mr. Dixon said : " The vast business interests of this country are 
eagerly intent on this question. The people of this country are 
mutually attracted, the North and the South, and they must sooner 
or later act together. Whatever Congress may do, this question 
will not cease to be agitated. Adjourn, if you see fit, without 
settling this question ; leave it as it is ; admit no member from 
Tennessee; and when you go through the States next fall which 
hold their elections for Congress, see whether agitation has ceased. 
Sir, a word of caution may not be unfit on that subject." 

Mr. Dixon maintained that the Senate would surrender its in- 
dependence by resolving that Senators should not be admitted 
from rebel States until Congress should have declared them en- 
titled to such representation. " Upon the question of credentials," 
said he, " this whole question is before the ^nate ; and it is for 
us to consider on that question whether the member presenting 
himself here for admission is a traitor or whether he is true, to 
his countiy." 

" Suppose," said Mr. Trumbull, " that in a time of peace the 
Legislature of Tennessee is disloyal, and swears allegiance to the 
Emperor Maximilian, does the Senator deny the authority of 
Congress to inquire into the character of that Legislature ? " 

" I do," replied Mr. Dixon. " It is for the Senate, and not for 
Congress, to make the inquiry if a Senator from Tennessee in the 
supposed case presents himself." 



REPRESEJTTATIOM. 425 

Mr. Trumbull said : " He denies the authority of Congress to 
decide whether the constituency is traitorous or loyal ! " 

"That is another point," said Mr. Dixon. 

" That is the very one I put/' said Mr. Trumbull. " If all 
the members of the Legislature of Tennessee swear allegiance to 
the Emperor Maximilian, and send a Senator here, I want to 
know if Congress has a right to inquire into the character of 
that Legislature ? " 

"I will answer that by asking another question," said Mr. 
Dixon. " Suppose that was the case, that the Emperor Maxi- 
milian had entire control of the State of Tennessee, and a person 
claimino; a ris-ht so to do should come here and oifer himself as 
a member of the Senate, and should be received here; that, in 
judging of the qualifications, returns, and elections of the member, 
the Senate decided that he was a Senator, has Congress any thing 
to do with the question ? I ask him if the House of Representa- 
tives can interfere ? Is there an apj^al to Congress or any other 
tribunal ? I ask him if that man is not a Senator in spite of the 
world?" 

" If," replied Mr. Trumbull, " the Senator means to ask me if 
the Senate has not the physical power to admit any body, elected 
or not, I admit they have the same right to do it that twelve jury- 
men would have, against the sworn and uncontradicted testimony 
of a hundred witnesses, to bring in a verdict directly agijinst the 
evidence and perjure themselves. I suppose we have the physical 
power to commit perjury here, when we have sworn to support 
the Constitution. We might admit a man here from Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue, elected by nobody, as a member of this Senate ; but 
we would commit perjury in doing it, and have no right to do it." 

Mr. Trumbull made an extended reply, which assumed some- 
what the form of a conversation, in which Mr, Dixon and other 
Senators participated. Mr. Trumbull claimed that it required the 
concurrent action of both houses of Congress to recognize any 
government in States where rebellion had overthrown it. 

On the 28th of February, the conciu'rent resolution still pend- 
ing, Mr. Nye, of Nevada, advocated its passage. He opposed the 
present admission of any member from the seceding States. " We 
.are told," said h% " by the apologists of these men who are being 
elected on their merits as rebels, to the exclusion of Union men, 
that ' we must not expect too much of them.' I fully accede to 



426 THE TEIRTY-Km'TH CONGRESS. 

this idea. A class that during its whole political life has aimed 
at a monopoly of wealth, a monopoly of labor, and a monopoly 
of political power; that engaged in the attempt at revolution in 
order to establish more fully and to perpetuate such monopoly ; 
that, failing in this, has become more bitter by disappointment, 
should have time; and, sir, I am decidedly in favor of giving 
them all the time necessary for the most substantial improvement. 
I would say to these men, ' Go home ! Go. back and labor as in- 
dustriously to disabuse the minds of your constituencies as you 
labored to mislead and impose upon them. Tell them that the 
Union Government always was and never can be any thing else 
than a just Government. Tell them that the Constitution has 
become the acknowledged sovereign, and that it presides in both 
houses of Congress. Inform them, while you are about it, that 
the rebel sympathizers and apologists in the North can do them 
no good ; that they are acting as much out of time and propriety 
now as they did in the tim§ of the war, when their encourage- 
ment only prolonged the conflict and added to Southern disaster. 
You may say to your constituencies that the majority in Congress 
is very tenacious on the subject of the Union war debt ; that it 
is determined to keep faith with the national creditors ; that it is 
bent on adopting and throwing around it all the safeguards and 
precautions possible; and that your admission just now, and your 
alliance. with Northern sympathizers, would not be propitious in 
raising the value of our public securities. While you are con- 
ferring with your constituents, you may as well repeat to them 
the common political axiom that Representatives are elected to 
represent their constituents, and that it is not believed at the seat 
of Government that a disloyal constituency would make such a 
mistake as to send loyal Rej)resentatives to Congress. In short, 
you may as well say to your people that, as Congress represents 
the loyalty of the nation. South as well as North, and has much 
important work on hand, some of it requiring a two-thirds ma- 
jority, it is not deemed wholly prudent to part with that majority 
out of mere comity to men from whom no assistance could be 
expected. Finally, by way of closing the suggestive instructions, 
you may give your constituents to understand that, as you went 
out of Congress rebel end foremost, you wilUnot probably get 
into those vacant scats over yonder except that you come back 
Union end foremost.' • 



Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, held opinions of tlie pending question 
different from those maintained by his colleague. He thought 
" the power to suspend the right of a State to representation might 
imply a dangerous power, and might imply a right to suspend it 
for any reason that Congress might see fit. The power to sus- 
pend the right of a State to be represented might hereafter be a 
terrible precedent." " There is no provision in the Constitution," 
said Mr. "Stewart, " conferring such a power upon Congress. No 
authority of the kind is expressed in that instrument, nor can I 
find any place where it is implied." In another portion of his 
speech, which Avas very long, and occupied part of the session of 
the succeeding day, Mr. Stewart remarked : " In the darkest time 
of the rebellion, I deny that the right to represent Tennessee in 
tliis hall by those who were loyal ever was for a moment sus- 
pended, but their power to obey the law, their power to represent 
it was prevented by treason. They were overpowered, and they 
were denied the right of representation, not by Congress, not by 
the Government. This war was to maintain for them that right 
which rebellion had sought to take away from them, and had for 
a time suspended the harmonious relations of the State to the 
General Government ; and it will be too much to admit that this 
Government has ever been in such a fix that the people thereof 
were really not entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and 
because they were denied it this war was brought on, this war 
was prosecuted." 

Mr. Johnson opposed the resolution in a protracted speech in 
which he reviewed the entire subject of reconstruction. Of the 
condition and rights of the Southern States he said : " They are 
as much States as they were when the insurrection was inaugu- 
rated, and their relation to their sister States, and their consequent 
relation to the Government of the United States, is the same rela- 
tion in which they stood to both when the insurrection was in- 
augurated. That would seem to follow logically as a necessary 
result, and if that is a necessary result, does it not also follow that 
they are entitled to representation in this chamber? Whether 
they can present persons who can take their seats, because they 
have individually committed crimes against the United States is 
another question ; but I speak now of the right itself." 

Mr. Johnson argued that holding secession sentiments a few 
years ago was no evidence of present disloyalty, and cited in proof 



428 TEE THIRTY-JflJVTH COJ^GBESS. 

of this proposition a newspaper article purporting to give secession 
resolutions drawn up by Mr. Wade, and passed at a meeting held 
at Cleveland in 1859, wliicli was presided over by Joshua R. 
Giddings. 

This called forth an answer from Mr. Wade, who said : " The 
Senator from Maryland called me in question for having been 
present at a meeting which he affirmed was held in Cleveland 
some seven years ago by persons called ' Sons of Liberty,' and he 
alleged that I there consented to certain resolutions that were 
passed which favored the doctrine of secession, and that I was 
chairman of the committee which reported them. Sir, the charge 
is a total forgery so far as I am concerned. I never was at any 
such meeting of the Sons of Liberty or any other sons. I never 
uttered such a sentiment in my life ; I am not one of those who 
have or have had much association with gentlemen holding to 
secession principles. My associations have all been the other 
way. During the war that secession made my counsels were 
against it. I was for war to the death against the principle of 
secession, wliile many other gentlemen in my eye were either par- 
ticipants in or apologists for that sentiment. I am perfectly 
aware that a war is made — and I am Avilling to meet it any- 
where — upon what are called Radicals of the country, and I am 
one of them. In olden times I was here in the Senate called an 
Abolitionist, but they have changed the name since. They have 
all got to be Abolitionists now, and they have changed my name 
to ' Radical.' 

" Mr. President, in the history of mankind, so far as I have 
read or know it, there never has been a time when parties were 
so organized on radical principles of justice and right. The party 
with whom I act appeal to no expediency, to none of your politi- 
cal policies; we dig dow^ to the granite of eternal truth, and 
there we stand, and they who assail us have to assail the great 
principles of the Almighty, for our principles are chained to his 
throne, and are as indestructible as the Almighty himself. I want 
no warfare with any body ; but if you will make war upon such 
principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for you. You can 
not prevail. 

" I have been in these political warfares for a long time ; I 
claim to be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when 
there were not five men with me to support me, and then I rose 



EEPEESEJ^TATIOJ^. 429 

here and told those who were inveighing like demons against the 
principles that they called abolitionism, that I was an Abolition- 
ist. To-day you are all Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by 
compulsion. I have wondered a great deal why men did not 
learn more about these things than they seem to do. Our prin- 
ciples are assailed now wi(,h just the same virulence that they 
used to be when we were in a small minority. I do not hold 
that they have triumphed tlius far because of any superior capac- 
ity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that Ave, from 
the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of 
the people and conquered the predominant party of this country 
which had stood completely dominating the whole nation for 
more than forty years ? Why is it that we have conquered you, 
and now are triumphant here in this Senate and almost by two- 
thirds in both branches, with the whole nation at our backs? 
What miracle has wrought this change? None other than the 
great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and right are destined 
among the American people to succeed, and the gates of hell can 
not prevail against them, although they are trying at this partic- 
ular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.] 

On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan 
first claimed the attention of tli6 Senate in a speech two hours 
in length. He argued " that for any guilty part taken by the 
people in the late war, that the sufferings and losses they endured 
in that war were the natural and sufficient punishment ; that after 
it they remain purged, and ought to be readmitted to all their con- 
stitutional rights at once. That it is due to the dignity of the 
United States as a great nation, if she punishes the actual traitors 
who incited the rebellion, that it be done solemnly and according 
to the strictest form of law, in open courts, where the prisoners 
may have counsel and witnesses, so that they may make their de- 
fense, if they have any. That according to the Constitution and 
laws all the States are still in the Union; that secession ordin- 
ances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the other; that 
they are neither dead by forfeiture or felo de se, but are now in 
full and perfect existence, with all their municipal machinery in 
full play. That the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen to 
amend the Constitution is fundamental and revolutionary, and 
destructive of the freedom of the States and the liberties of the 
people ; that it is a threat to deprive them of their rights by com- 



430 THE THIETY-J{IJ{TH COJ^GRESS. 



pelling tlicm either to admit negroes to the right of suffrage or to 
give up a share of their representation, which is theirs by law and 
the last aniondnient to the Constitution. That the resolution now 
before us from the same committee is also revolutionary and de- 
structive, being an attempt to suspend the Constitution and laws 
in regard to representation in Congress over eleven States of the 
Union until Congress shall see fit to restore them. It is a decla- 
ration on the part of the members of the present House and 
Senate, that having the means of keeping these States from being 
represented here, they are going to do so as long as they please ; 
that no one of these measures can be justified as a punishment 
for the rebellion ; that the Constitution forbids them as bills of 
pains and penalties, and as ex post facto in their character." 

Mr. Garret Davis, in the course of a speech in opposition to 
the resolution, suggested a summary solution of the present diffi- 
culties : " There is," said he, " a provision in the Constitution 
which requires the President to communicate to the two houses 
of Congress information as to the state of the Union, and to 
recommend to them such measures as he shall deem proper and 
expedient. What does this necessarily impose upon him? He 
has to ascertain what men compose the two houses of Congress. 
It is liis right, it is his constitutional function, to ascertain who 
constitute the two houses of Congress. The members of the 
Senate who are in favor of the admission of the Southern Sen- 
ators could get into a conclave with those Southern Senators any 
day, and they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The 
President of the United States has the constitutional option — 
it is his function, it his power, it is his right — and I would 
advise him to exercise it, to ascertain, where there are two dif- 
ferent bodies of men both claiming to be the Senate, which is 
the true Senate. If the Southern members and those who are 
for admitting them to their seats constitute a majority of the 
whole Senate, the President has a right — and, by the Eternal ! 
he ought to exercise that right forthwith, to-morrow, or any day 
— to recognize the Opposition in this body and the Southern 
members, the majority of the whole body, as the true Senate. 
And then what would become of you gentlemen? Oh, if the 
lion of the Hermitage, and that great statesman, the sage of 
Ashland, were here in the seat of power, how soon would they 
settle this question ! They would say to, and they would inspire 



EEPBESEJfTATIOM. 431 

those to whom they spoke, ' You Southern men arc kept out of , 
your seats by violence, by revohition, against the Constitution, 
against right ; the Union is dissolved, the Government is brought 
to ah end by keeping the Senators from eleven States out of their 
seats when the Constitution expressly states that every State shall 
have two Senators.' 

" There is no plainer principle of constitutional law than that 
the President has the right to ascertain and decide what body 
of men is the Senate and what the House of Representatives 
when there are two bodies of men claiming to be each. It is 
his right to do so, and the people of America, will sustain him 
in the noble and manly and patriotic performance of his duty 
in determining the identity of the true House. It ought. i» have 
been done at the beginning of this session. When a petty clerk 
took upon himself to read the list of the Representatives of the 
people of the United States, and to keep the Representatives of 
eleven States out of their seats, the Constitution guaranteeing to 
them those seats for the benefit of their constituents and country, 
that subordinate never ought to have been tolerated for one day 
in the perpetration of so great, an outrage. Whenever Andrew 
Johnson chooses to exercise his high function, his constitutional 
right of saying to the Southern Senators, 'Get together with 
the Democrats and the Conservatives of the Senate, and if you 
constitute a majority, I will recognize you as the Senate of the 
United States,' what then will become of you gentlemen ? You 
will quietly come in and form a part of that Senate." 

Mr. Doolittle opposed the passage of the resolution. Referring 
to the plan proposed by Mr. Davis, he said : " If such a thing 
should happen — which God in his mercy, I hope, will always 
prevent — that the Senate should be divided, and one portion 
should go into one room, and another into another, each claim- 
ing to be the Senate, I suppose the House of Representatives 
could direct its clerk to go to one body and not go to the other, 
and I do not know but the President of the United States would 
have the power, in case of such a division, to send his private 
secretary with messages to one body and not send them to the 
other. Perhaps that might occur; but it is one of those cases 
that are not to be supposed or to be tolerated." 

Mr. Wilson advocated the resolution : " The nation," said he, 
" is divided into two classes ; that- the one class imperiously de- 



432 THE THIRTY-KINTH COJ^GRESS. 

mands the immediate and unconditional admission into these 
halls of legislation of the rebellious States, rebel end foremost; 
that the other class seeks their admission into Congress, at an 
early day, loyal end foremost. He would hear, too, the blended 
voices of unrepentant rebels and rebel symj^athizers and apolo- 
gists mingling in full chorus, not for the restoration of a broken 
Union, for the unity and indivisibility of the republic has been 
assured on bloody fields of victory, but for the restoration to 
these vacant chairs of the ^ natural leaders ' of the South." 

Referring to Mr. Davis' programme for the President's in- 
terference with the Senate, Mr. Wilson said : " Sir, there was a 
time when a Senator who should have said what we have recently 
heard (in. this floor would have sunk into his seat under the with- 
ering rebuke of his associates. No Senator or Representative has 
a right to tell us what the Executive will do. The President 
acts upon his own responsibility. We are Senators, this is the 
Senate of the United States, and it becomes us to maintain the 
rights and the dignity of the Senate of the United States. The 
j)eople demand that their Senators and Representatives shall 
enact the needed measures to restore, at the earliest possible 
day, the complete practical relations of the seceded States to the 
National Government, and protect the rights and liberties of all 
the people, without regard to color, race, or descent." 

Mr. Fessenden, having the resolution in charge, made a second 
speech, in which he answered objections which had been urged, 
and defended the Committee of Fifteen against imputations of a 
disposition to delay the work of reconstruction. 

Mr. McDougal took occasion to say a few words against the 
resolution. He said : " I would not dare to vote for this propo- 
sition, because I have some regard for the great Judge who lives 
above. The question pending now, as practically useless as it 
will be as a rule, is yet mischievous. It is in the way of teach- 
ing bad precedents, false law, unsound loyalty. These things are 
like the worms that eat into the majestic oaks which are used 
to build vessels to ride the sea, and decay their strength, so that 
they fall down and make wrecks of navies." 

Mr. Hendricks had moved to amend the resolution by insert- 
ing the words " inhabitants of" after the word " States." This 
amendment was rejected. The Senate then proceeded to take the 



BEPBESEJ^TATIOJ^. 433 

vote on the concurrent resolution, which was passed — yeas, 29; 
nays, 18. 

Thus the opinion of Congress was established, by a large ma- 
jority, that the two houses should act conjointly upon the whole 
question of the representation of States, and that this question 
was entirely independent of the Executive. . 



28 



434 THE TUIETY-J^IJ^TE COJ^GEESS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENT— IN THE HOUSE. 
A COXSTITUTIOXAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED AND POSTPONED — PROPOSITION BY 

Mr. Stewart — The Reconstruction Amendment — Death of its Prede- 
cessor Lajiented— Opposition TO THE Disfranchisement of Rebels — "The 
Unrepentent Thirty-three" — Nine-tenths Reduced to One-twelfth — 
Advice to Congress — The Cojimittee Denounced — Democratic and Re- 
PUBLIC-4N Policy Compared — Authority without Power — A Variety of 
Opinions — An Earthquake Predicted — The Joint Resolution Passes 
the House. 

WHILE tlie joint resolution proposing a modification of the 
basis of representation was the subject of consideration in 
the Senate, a constitutional amendment relating to the 
rights of citizens was made the topic of brief discussion in the 
House. It had been previously introduced and referred to the 
Committee of Fifteen. From this committee it was reported back 
by Mr. Bingham. It was proposed in the following form : 

"Article — . That Congress shall have power to make all laws which 
shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each State all 
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and to all per- 
sons in the several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and 
property." 

This proposition was introduced on the 26th of February, and 
was debated during the sessions of three successive days. 

Many members of the legal profession saw in the final clause 
a dangerous centralization of power. It was considered objec- 
tionable as seeming to authorize the General Government to in- 
terfere with local laws on the subject of property, the legal rights 
of women, and other matters hitherto considered wholly within 
the domain of State legislation ; hence the Republican majority 
unanimously voted to postpone the amendment until April. 



EECOJ^STRUCTIOJf AMEMDMEJfT. 435 

After this postponement, and the failure of the amendment 
relating to the basis of representation to pass the Senate, the 
subject of reconstruction was in the hands of the Committee of 
Fifleen until the 30th of April. 

. Individuals had, from time to time, introduced propositions on 
the subject, which were referred to the appropriate committee. 
The one which attracted most attention and excited greatest in- 
terest was a proposition in the Senate, by Mr. Stewart, of Nevada. 
This was in favor of a joint resolution providing that each of the 
States lately in rebellion shall be recognized as having resumed its 
relations with the Government, and its Representatives shall be 
admitted to Congress whenever it shall have amended its Consti- 
tution so as to provide — 

"1. There shall be no distinction in civil rights among its citizens by 
reason of race or color or previous condition of servitude; 2. That all debts 
incurred in aid of the rebellion shall be repudiated ; 3. That all claim for 
compensation for liberated slaves shall be relinquished; and 4. That the 
elective franchise be extended to all persons on the same terms, irrespective 
of race, color, or previous condition, provided that none be disfranchised 
who were qualified voters in 1860; and that upon these conditions being 
ratified by a majority of the present voting population of each State, (includ- 
ing all qualified to vote in I860,) a general amnesty shall be proclaimed as 
to all who engaged in the rebellion." 

This proposition had peculiar significance, since it emanated 
from a gentleman who, though elected as a Eepublican, had ever 
since the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau acted with the Conserv- 
atives. Mr. Sumner, "with open arms," welcomed the Senator 
from Nevada as " a new convert to the necessity of negro suf- 
frage." Mr. Wilson was thankful to the author of this proposi- 
tion for placing the whole question " on the basis of universal 
liberty, universal justice, universal suffrage, and universal am- 
nesty." The resolution was referred to the Committee of Fifteen, 
with whom Mr. Wilson had no doubt it would receive " serious 
consideration." 

On the 30th of April, Mr. Stevens reported from the Committee 
of Fifteen a joint resolution providing for the passage of the 
following amendment to the Constitution : 

"ARTICLE — . 

" Sec. 1. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any 



436 THE THIETT-JflJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process 
of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection 

of the laws. 

"Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States 
which may be included within this Union according to their respective 
numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding 
Indians not taxed. But whenever in any State the elective franchise shall 
be denied to any portion of its male citizens not less than twenty-one years 
of age, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or 
other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall be reduced in 
the proportion which the number of male citizens shall bear to the whole 
number of such male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age. 

" Sec. 3. Until the 4th day of July, in the year 1870, all persons who 
voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall 
be excluded from the right to vote for Representatives in Congress and for 
electors for President and Vice-President of the United States. 

"Sec. 4. Neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay 
any debt or obligation already incurred, or which may hereafter be incurred, 
in aid of insurrection or of war against the United States, or any claim for 
compensation for loss of involuntary service or labor. 

" Sec. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legis- 
lation, the provisions of this article." 

This proposed amendment to the Constitution was accompanied 
by two bills, one of which provided that when any State lately 
in insurrection should have ratified the amendment, its Senators 
and Eepresentatives, if found duly elected and qualified, should 
be admitted as members of Congress. The other bill declared 
the high ex-officials of the late Confederacy ineligible to any 
office under the Government of the United States. 

The proposed constitutional amendment was by a vote of the 
House made the special order for Tuesday, the 8th of May. On 
that day Mr. Stevens occupied the attention of the House with a 
brief argument in favor of the amendment. Eeferring to the 
death in the Senate of the amendment previously proposed, Mr. 
Stevens said : " But it is dead, and unless this (less efficient, I 
admit) shall pass, its death has postponed the protection of the 
colored race perhaps for ages. I confess my mortification at its 
defeat. I grieved especially because it almost closed the door of 
hope for the amelioration of the condition of the freedmen. But 
men in pursuit of justice must never despair. Let us again try 
and see whether we can not devise some way to overcome the 
united forces of self-righteous Republicans and unrighteous Cop- 
per-hoads. It will not do for those who for thirty years have 



BECOKSTUTJCTIOK AMEJ^BMEKT. 437 

fouglit the beasts at Ephesus to be frightened by the fangs of 
modern catamounts." 

Of the present proposition, Mr. Stevens said : " It is not all 
that the committee desired. It falls far short of my wishes, but 
it fulfills my hopes. I believe it is all that can be obtained 
in the present state of public opinion. Not only Congress, but 
the several States are to be consulted. Upon a careful survey 
of the whole ground, we did not believe that nineteen of the loyal 
States could be induced to ratify any proposition more stringent 
than this." 

Referring to the section prohibiting rebels from voting until 
1870, Mr. Stevens said : "My only objection to it is that it is too 
lenient. Here is the mildest of all punishments ever inflicted on 
traitors. I might not consent to the extreme severity denounced 
upon them by a provisional governor of Tennessee — I mean the 
late lamented Andrew Johnson of blessed memory — but I would 
have increased the severity of this section." 

Mr. Blaine called attention to the fact that most of the persons 
whom the third section of the amendment was designed to dis- 
franchise, had their political rights restored to them by the 
Amnesty Proclamation, or had been pardoned by the President. 

Mr. Finck opposed the proposition in a speech of which the 
following are extracts : " Stripped of all disguises, this measure is 
a mere scheme to deny representation to eleven States ; to pre- 
vent indefinitely a complete restoration of the Union, and per- 
petuate the power of a sectional and dangerous party. 

" Sir, the whole scheme is revolutionary, and a most shallow 
pretext for an excuse to exclude the vote of eleven States in the 
next Presidential election. You can not exact conditions in this 
way from any State in the Union ; no more from Georgia than 
from Massachusetts. They are each equal States in the Union, 
held together by the same Constitution, neither being the superior 
of the other in their relation to the Federal Government as 
States." 

Commenting on the first section, designed to insert a recogni- 
tion of civil rights in the Constitution, Mr. Finck said : " If it is 
necessary to adopt it in order to confer upon Congress power over 
the matters contained in it, then the Civil Rights Bill, which the 
President vetoed, was passed without authority, and is clearly 
unconstitutional." 



438 THE TniBTY-MI^'TH COJfGBESS. 

To this inference, INIr. Garfield replied : " I am glad to see this 
first section here, which proposes to hold over every American 
citizen without regard to color, the protecting shield of law. The 
gentleman who has just taken his scat undertakes to show that 
because we propose to vote for this section, we therefore acknowl- 
edge that the Civil Rights Bill was unconstitutional. The Civil 
Rights Bill is now a part of the law of the laud. But every 
gentleman knows it will cease to be a part of the law whenever 
the sad moment arrives when that gentleman's party comes into 
power. It is precisely for that reason that we propose to lift 
that great and good law above the reach of j)olitical strife, be- 
yond the reach of the plots and machinations of any party, and 
fix it in the serene sky, in the eternal firmament of the Constitu- 
tion, where no storm of passion can shake it, and no cloud can 
obscure it. For this reason, and not because I believe the Civil 
Rights Bill unconstitutional, I am glad to see that first section 
here." 

Mr. Garfield opposed the section disfranchising rebels as "the 
only proposition in this resolution that is not bottomed clearly 
and plainly upon principle — principle that will stand the test 
of centuries, and be as true a thousand years hence as it is 
to-day." 

Mr. Thayer, while favoring the proposed amendment in all 
other particulars, was apposed to the third section. " I think," 
said he, "that it imperils the whole measure under consideration. 
What will continue to be the condition of the country if you 
adopt this feature of the proposed plan? Continual distraction, 
continued agitation, continued bickerings, continued opposition to 
the law, and it will be well for the country if a new insurrection 
shall not spring from its bosom." 

Mr. Boyer denounced the proposition as " an ingenious scheme 
to keep out the Southern States, and to prevent the restoration 
of the Union until after the next Presidential election." 

]VIi\ Kelley, if he "could have controlled the report of the 
Committee of Fifteen, would have proposed to give the right of 
suffrage to every loyal man in the country." He advocated the 
amendment, however, in all its provisions. He especially de- 
fended the third section. " This measure," said he, " does not 
propose to punish them ; on the contrary, it is an act of amnesty, 
and proposes, after four years, to reinvest them with all thcii 



RECOMSTBUCTIOJ\' AMEKDMEKT. 439 

rights, which they do not possess at this time because of their 
crime." 

The passage of the resolution was next advocated by Mr. 
Schenck. Referring to the third section, he denied the principle 
advanced by ]\Ir. Garfield that there was any thing inconsistent or 
wrong in makhig it an exclusion for a term of years instead of 
exclusion altogether. " If there be any thing in that argument," 
said he, " in case of crime, you must either not sentence a man to 
the penitentiary at all, or else incarcerate him for the term of his 
natural life. Or, to compare it to another thing, which perhaps 
better illustrates the principle involved, when a foreigner arrives 
upon our shores we should not say to him, '■ At the end of five 
years, when you have familiarized yourself with our institutions, 
and become attached to them, we w^ill allow you to become a 
citizen, and admit you to all the franchises we enjoy,' but we 
should require that he be naturalized the moment he touches our 
soil, or else excluded from the rights of citizenship forever." 

Mr. Schenck thought the loyal and true people throughout the 
land were "full ready to declare that those who have proved 
traitors, and have raised their parricidal hands against the life of 
the country, who have attempted to strike down our Government 
and destroy its institutions, should be the very last to be trusted 
to take any share in preserving, conducting, and carrying on that 
Government and maintaining those institutions." 

]\Ii'. Smith opposed the resolution in a speech which, if it added 
nothing to the arguments, contributed, by its good humored per- 
sonalities and its harmless extravagancies, to the amusement of 
the auditors. 

On the following day. May 9th, the consideration of the subject 
was resumed, and Mr. Broomall addressed the House in favor 
of the resolution. He began by counting the votes that would 
probably be cast against the amendment. " It would meet the 
opposition," said he, "of the unrepentant thirty-three of this 
body. It was also to be exf)ected that the six Johnsonian 
new converts to Democracy would oppose and vote against this 
measure, commencing Avith the gentleman from New York, [Mr. 
Raymond,] who, I believe, has the disease in the most virulent 
form, thence down to the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Smith,] 
who preceded me on this question, and who has the mildest and 
most amiable type of the infection. Upon them, too, arguments 



4A0 TEE THIRTY-J^IMTE COJfGBESS. 

are useless. There must, then, be thirty-nine votes against the 
measure, and I want there to be no more." 

To the objection urged against the third section of the proposed 
amendment, that it would disfranchise nine-tenths of all the voters 
of the South, ]\Ir. Broomall replied : " This is a grand mistake. 
There were in 1860 one million one hundred and twenty thousand 
voters in those eleven States. We may take seven hundred and 
fifty thousand as the number of individuals in the South who ren- 
dered aid and comfort to the enemy, not counting the compara- 
tively few though powerful leaders who rendered aid and comfort 
outside of the army. But, sir, we do not propose to disfranchise 
even these seven hundred and fifty thousand. Supposing two 
hundred and fifty thousand of the rebel army were lost, we have 
five hundred thousand actual voters in the South to be disfran- 
chised by this measure, if they come within the meaning of it. 
But do they come within the meaning of this provision ? Why, 
sir, it does not embrace the unwilling conscripts ; it does not em- 
brace the men who were compelled to serve in the army. It would 
be fair to say three hundred thousand of these people belonged to 
the unwilling class, who were forced into the army by rigid con- 
scription laws and the various contrivances of the leading rebels. 
This will leave two hundred thousand; and I say now it is ut- 
terly impossible, in my opinion, that the number of people in the 
South who can be operated upon by this provision should exceed 
two hundred thousand, if, indeed, it should reach the one half of 
that number. Is this nine-tenths of the voters of the South? 
Why, it is about one in every twelve." 

ISIr. Shanklin opposed the amendment as intended " to disfran- 
chise the people of the Southern States who have gone into this 
rebellion, until the party in power could fasten and rivet the 
chains of oppression for all time to come, and hedge themselves 
in power, that they may rule and control those people at will." 

Mr. Shanklin closed his speech with the following advice to 
Congress: "Discharge your joint Committee on Reconstruction; 
abolish your Freedmen's Bureau; repeal your Civil Rights Bill, 
and admit all the delegates from the seceded States to their seats 
in Congress, who have been elected according to the laws of the 
country and possess the constitutional qualification, and all will 
be well." 

Mr. Raymond spoke in favor of the amendment, except the 



EECOKSTItUCTIOM AMEMBMEMT. 44I 

disfranchisement clause. He had opposed the Civil Rights Bill on 
the ground of want of constitutional power in Congress to pass 
it. He favored the first section of this amendment, since it gave 
the previous acts of Congress a constitutional basis. 

In answer to INIr. Broomall's " ingenious argument/' ]\Ir. Ray- 
mond said : " It seems to me idle to enter into such calculations, 
which depend on a series of estimates, each one of which can not 
be any thing more than a wild and random guess. I take it that 
we all know perfectly well that the great masses of the Southern 
people ' voluntai'ily adhered to the insurrection ;' not at the out- 
set, not as being originally in favor of it, but during its progress, 
sooner or later, they voluntarily gave in their adhesion to it, and 
gave it aid and comfort. They did not all join the army. They 
did not go into the field, but they did, at different times, from 
various motives and in various ways, give it aid and comfort. 
That would exclude the great body of the people of those States 
under this amendment from exercising the right of suffi-age." 

Mr. Raymond asserted that all that was offered to the rebel 
legislatures of the Southern States, in return for the concessions 
required of them, was " the right to be represented on this floor, 
provided they will also consent not to vote for the men who are 
to represent them ! The very price, by which we seek to induce 
their assent to these amendments we snatch away from their 
hands the moment that assent is secured. Is there any man here 
who can so far delude himself as to suppose for a moment that 
the people of the Southern States will accede to any such scheme 
as this ? There is not one chance in ten thousand of their doins: 
it." 

Mr. MoKee advocated the amendment. He thought that op- 
position to its third section was a rebuke to those States which 
had passed laws disfranchising rebels. To obviate all objections 
to this section, however, he proposed a substitute forever exclud- 
ing "all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrec- 
tion " from 'holding " any office under the Government of the 
United States." 

Mr. Eldridge did not intend "to make an argument on the 
merits of the joint resolution." His remarks were mostly in 
derogation of the committee by whom the measure was recom- 
mended. " The committee," said he, " report no facts whatever, 
and give us no conclusion. They simply report amendments to 



44'^ THE TIIIBTY-J{IKTH COJfGBESS. 

the Constitution. Was that the purpose for which the committee 
was organized ? Was it to change the fundamental law of the 
land under which we of the loyal States assembled here? Was 
that the duty with which the committee was charged? Were 
they to inquire and report an entire change of the fundamental 
law of the nation which would destroy the States and create an 
empire? I say they were charged with no such duty. The re- 
solution can not fairly be construed as giving to the committee 
any such power, any such jurisdiction. The committee stands 
resisting the restoration of this Union, and I hope that no further 
business will be referred to it. It has rendered itself unworthy 
of the high duty with which it was charged." 

Mr. Eldridge asserted : " The whole scheme is in the interest 
of party alone, to j)reserve and perpetuate the party idea of this 
Republican disunion party." 

The debate thus entering " the domain of partisan controversy," 
Mr. Boutwell, in a speech which followed, undertook to show 
how the proposition before the House " traverses the policy of the 
Democratic i^arty with reference to the reconstruction of the Gov- 
ernment." Mr. Boutwell described the policy of the Democratic 
party, "which," said he, "they laid down as early as 1856 in the 
platform made at Cincinnati, wherein they declared substantially 
that it was the right of a Territory to be admitted into this 
Union with such- institutions as it chose to establish, not even by 
imjilication admitting that the representatives of the existing Gov- 
ernment had any right to canvass those institutions, or to consider 
the right of the Territory to be recognized as a State. 

"Now, sir, from that doctrine, which probably had its origin 
in the resolutions of 1798, the whole of their policy to this day 
has legitimately followed. First, we saw its results in the doc- 
trine of Mr. Buchanan, announced in 1860, that, while the Con- 
stitution did not provide for or authorize the secession of a State 
from this Union, there was no power in the existing Government 
to compel a State to remain in the Union against its own judg- 
ment. Following that doctrine, they come legitimately to the 
conclusion of to-day, in which they are supported, as I under- 
stand, by the President of the United States upon the one side, 
and, as I know, by the testimony of Alexander H. Stephens, late 
Vice-President of the so-called Confederacy, \\^o\\ the other. 
That doctrine, is that these eleven States have to-day, each for it- 



BECOJ^STRUCTIOJ^ AMENDMENT. 443 

self, an existing and unquestionable right of representation in 
the Government of this country, and that it is a continuous right 
which has not been interrupted by any of the events of the war." 

On the other hand, INIr. Boutwell thus defined the position of 
"the Union party," which, he said, "stands unitedly upon two 
propositions. The first is equality of representation, about which 
there is no difference of opinion. The second is, that there shall 
be a loyal people in each applicant State before any Representative 
from that State is admitted in Congress. And there is a third : 
a vast majority of the Republican party, soon to be the controlling 
and entire force of that party, demand suffrage for our friends, for 
those Avho have stood by us in our days of tribulation. And for 
myself, with the right, of course, to change my opinion, I believe 
in the Constitutional power of the Government to-day to extend 
the elective franchise to every loyal male citizen of the republic." 

Mr. Spalding favored the amendment, including the third sec- 
tion, to which exception had been taken by some of his friends. 
He asked, " Is it exceptionable? Is it objectionable? If it be so, 
it is, in my judgment, for the reason that the duration of the pe- 
riod of incapacity is not extended more widely. I take my stand 
here, that it is necessary to ingraft into that enduring instrument 
called the Constitution of the United States something which shall 
admonish this rebellious people, and all who shall come after them, 
that treason against the Government is odious ; that it carries with 
it some penalty, some disqualification ; and the only one which we 
seek to attach by this amendment is a disqualification in voting — 
not for their State and county and town officers, but for mem- 
bers of Congress, who are to be the law-makers, and for the 
Executive of the United States, this disqualification to operate 
for the short period of four years." 

Mr. Miller advocated all the sections of the proposed amend- 
ment except the third. Of this he said : " Though it seems just 
on its face, I doubt the propriety of embodying it with the otljer 
amendments, as it may retard, if not endanger, the ratification 
of the amendment in regard to representation, and we can not 
afford to endanger in any manner a matter of such vital impor- 
tance to the country." 

Mr. Eliot had voted against the former amendment, which was 
passed by the House and rejected by the Senate. The present 
proposed amendment, while it was not all he could ask, was not 



444 TEE THIBTY-J^IMTE COJ^GEJSSS. 

open to the objections wlucli then controlled his vote. In advo- 
cating the third section, he said: " It is clear, upon adjudged law, 
that the States lately in rebellion, and the inhabitants of those 
States, by force of the civil war, and of the Union triumph in 
that war, so far have lost their rights to take part in the Govern- 
ment of the Union that some action on the part of Congress is 
required to restore those rights. Pardon and amnesty given by 
the President can not restore them. Those men can not vote for 
President or for Representatives in Congress until, in some way, 
Congress has so acted as to restore their jDOwer. The question, 
then, is very simple : Shall national power be at once conferred 
on those who have striven, by all means open to them, to destroy 
the nation's life ? Shall our enemies and the enemies of the Gov- 
ernment, as soon as they have been defeated in war, heljD to direct 
and to control the public policy of the Government — and tliat, 
too, while those men, hostile themselves, keep from all exercise 
of political power the only true and loyal friends whom we have 
had, during these four years of war, within these Southern States?" 

It had been argued against the third section that it could not 
be enforced, that it would be inoperative. To this objection Mr. 
Shellabarger replied : " It will not require standing armies. You 
can have registry laws. Upon this registry list you may place 
the names of men who are to be disqualified, and you may also 
have the names of all who are qualified to vote under the law. 
There they will stand, there they will be, to be referred to by 
your Government in the execution of its laAVS. And when it 
comes to this House or to the Senate to determine whether a man 
is duly elected, you can resort to the ordinary process applicable 
to a trial in a contested election case in either body, as to whether 
he has been elected by the men who were entitled to elect him." 

Thursday, May 10th, was the last day of this discussion in the 
House. Mr. Randall first took the floor and spoke in opposition 
to the joint resolution. To the friends of the measure he said : 
" It is intended to secure what you most wish : an entire disagree- 
ment to the whole scheme by the eleven Southern States, and a 
continued omission of representation on this floor." 

Mr. Strouse, in opposing the amendment, occupied most of his 
time in reading an editorial from the New York Times, which 
he characterized as " sound, patriotic, statesmanlike, and just." 

Mr. Strouse expressed, as his own opinion, " that the States are, 



RECOKSTEVCTIOK AMEMDMEJfT. 445 

and never ceased to be, in law and in fact, constituent parts of 
our Union. If I am correct in this opinion, what necessity exists 
for these amendments of the Constitution? Let the States be 
represented in the Senate and House by men wlio can conscien- 
tiously qualify as members ; and after that, when we have a full 
Congress, with the whole country represented, let any amendment 
that may be required be proposed, and let those most interested 
have an opportunity to participate in the debates and delibera- 
tions of matters of so much moment to every citizen." 

Mr. Banks regarded the pending amendment as the most im- 
portant question which could be presented to the House or to the 
country. "It is my belief," said he, "that reorganization of 
governments in the insurgent States can be secured only by 
measures which will work a change in the basis of political 
society. Any thing that leaves the basis of political society in 
the Southern States untouched, leaves the enemy in condition to 
renew the war at his pleasure, and gives him absolute power to 
destroy the Government whenever he chooses. 

" There are two methods by which the change I propose can 
be made : one by extending the elective franchise to the negro, 
the other by restrictions upon the political power of those here- 
tofore invested mth the elective franchise — a part of whom are 
loyal and a part of whom are disloyal, a part of whom are 
friends and a part of whom are enemies. 

" I have no doubt that the Government of the United States 
has authority to extend the elective franchise to the colored pop- 
ulation of the insurgent States, but I do not think it has the 
power. The distinction I make between authority and power is 
this : We have, in the nature of our Government, the right to do 
it ; but the public opinion of the country is such at this precise 
moment as to make it impossible we should do it. The situation 
of opinion in these States compels us to look to other means to 
protect the Government against the enemy. 

" I approve of the proposition which disfranchises the enemies 
of the country. I think it right in principle. I think it neces- 
sary at this time. If I had any opinion to express, I should say 
to the gentlemen of the House that it is impossible to organize 
a government in the insurgent States, and have the enemies of the 
country in possession of political power, in whole or in part, in 
local governments or in representation here. 



44^ TEE THIBTY-MIJ^TH COJVGRESS. 

" An enemy to the Government, a man who avows himself an 
enemy of its policy and measures, who has made war against the 
Government, would not seem to have any absolute right to share 
political power equally with other men who have never been 
:,l;herwise than friends of the Government. 

" A pardon does not confer or restore political power. A gen- 
oral act of amnesty differs from an individual pardon only in the 
fact that it applies to a class of offenders who can not be indi- 
vidually described. It secures immunity from punishment or 
prosecution by obliterating all remembrance of the offense; but 
it confers or restores no one to political power. 

" There is no justification for the opinion so strongly expressed, 
that this measure will fail because the rebel States will not con- 
sent to the disfranchisement of any portion of their own peoj^le. 
The proposition is for the loyal States to determine upon what 
terms they will restore to the Union the insurgent States. It is 
not necessary that they should participate in our deliberations 
upon this subject, and wholly without reason that they should 
have the power to defeat it. It is a matter of congratulation that 
they have not this power. We have the requisite number of States 
without them. 

" I do not believe that there is a State in this Union where at 
least a clear majority of the people were not from the beginning 
opposed to the war; and could you remove from the control of 
public opinion one or two thousand in each of these States, so as 
to let up from the foundations of political society the mass of 
common people, you would have a population in all these States 
as loyal and true to the Government as the people of any portion 
of the East or West. 

" The people knew that it was the rich man's war and the poor 
man's fight. The legislation of the insurgent States exempted, to 
a great degree, the rich men and their sons, on account of the 
possession of property, while it forced, at the point of the bayonet, 
and oftentimes at the cost of life, the masses of the people to 
maintain their cause. There is nothing in the whole war more 
atrocious than the cruel measures taken by the rebel leaders to 
force the people who had no interest in it, and were averse to 
sharing its dishonor and peril." 

Mr. Banks remarked of the amendment : " It will produce the 
exact result which wo desire: the immediate restoration of the 



RECOKSTRVCTION AMENDMENT. 447 

governments of the States to the Union, the recognition of the 
loyal people, and the disfrancluscinont of the implacable and un- 
changeable public enemies of the Union, and the creation of State 
governments upon the sound and enduring basis of common in- 
terest and common affection." 

Mr. Eckley advocated the joint resolution, citing a number 
of historical and political precedents in favor of its provisions. 
Of the disfranchising clause, he said : " The only ol)jection I have 
to the proposition is, that it does not go far enough. I would 
disfranchise them forever. They have no right, founded in jus- 
tice, to participate in the administration of the Government or 
exercise political power. If they receive protection in their 
persons and property, are permitted to share in the nation's 
bounties, and live in security under the broad segis of the na- 
tion's flag, it is far more than the nation owes them." 

Mr. Longyear favored the amendment, but disliked the third 
section, of which he said : " Let us then reject this dead weight, 
and not load down good provisions, absolutely essential provis- 
ions, by this, which, however good in and of itself, can not be 
enforced. I regard this provision, if adopted, both worthless and 
harmless, and, therefore, I shall vote for the proposed amendment 
as a whole, whether this be rejected or retained." 

Mr. Beaman held a similar opinion. He said : "We very well 
know that such a provision would be entirely inoperative, because 
electors for President and Vice-President can be appointed by the 
Legislatures, according to a practice that has always obtained in 
South Carolina. The provision does not extend to the election 
of Senators, and, consequently, it can operate only to affect the 
election of members of this House, and that only for a period 
of four years." 

Mr. Eogers denounced the proposed amendment in emphatic 
terms. He said : " The first section of this programme of dis- 
union is the most dangerous to liberty. It saps the foundation 
of the Government ; it destroys the elementary principles of the 
States ; it consolidates every thing into one imperial despotism ; 
it annihilates all the rights which lie at the foundation of the 
union of the States, and which have characterized this Govern- 
ment and made it prosperous and great during the long period 
of its existence. It will result in a revolution worse than that 
through which Ave have just passed ; it will rock the earth like 



44 s TEE teiett-jvij^te: cojvgbess. 

the throes of an earthquake, until its tragedy will summon the 
inhabitants of the world to witness its dreadful shock. 

"In the third section, you undertake/' said Mr. Rogers, "to 
enunciate a doctrine that will, if carried out, disfranchise seven 
or eight million people, and that will put them in a worse con- 
dition than the serfs of Russia or the downtrodden j)eople of 
Poland and Hungary, until the year 1870." 

Mr. Farnsworth advocated the amendment, but did not regard 
the third section as of any practical value. It did not provide 
punishment adequate to the guilt of the various oiFenders. " There 
is a large class of men," said he, " both in the North and South, 
equally— yea, and more — guilty than thousands of the misguided 
men who will be disfranchised by this provision, who will not 
be affected by it. I allude to those politicians and others at the 
South, who, keeping themselves out of danger, set on the ignorant 
and brave to fight for what they were told by these rascals were 
'their rights;' and to other politicians, editors, 'copper-heads' in 
the North, some of whom were and are members of Congress, 
who encouraged them and discouraged our soldiers." 

Mr. Bingham spoke in favor of the amendment. He preferred 
that the disfranchising clause should be embodied in an act of 
Congress. "I trust," said he, "that this amendment, with or 
without the third section, will pass this House, that the day may 
soon come when Tennessee — loyal Tennessee — loyal in the very 
heart of the rebellion, her mountains and plains blasted by the 
ravages of war and stained with the blood of her faithful chil- 
dren fallen in the great struggle for the maintenance of the 
Union, having already conformed her constitution and laws to 
every provision of this amendment, will at once, upon its sub- 
mission by Congress, irrevocably ratify it, and be, without further 
delay, represented in Congress by her loyal Representatives and 
Senators. 

"Let that great example be set by Tennessee, and it will be 
worth a hundred thousand votes to the loyal people in the free 
North. Let this be done, and it will be hailed as the harbinger 
of that day for which all good men pray, when the fallen pillars 
of the republic shall be restored without violence or the noise of 
words or the sound of the hammer, each to its original place in 
the sacred temple of our national liberties, thereby giving assur- 
ance to all the world that, for the defense of the republic, it was 



RECOJ^STRUCTlOJr AMEJs'DMEKT. 449 

not in vain that a million and a half of men, the very elect of 
the earth, rushed to arms ; that the republic still lives, and will 
live for evermore, the sanctuary of an inviolable justice, the refuge 
of liberty, and the imperishable monument of the nation's dead, 
from the humblest soldier who perished on the march, or went 
do'svn amid the thunder and tempest of the dread conflict, up 
through all the shining roll of heroes and patriots and martyrs 
to the incorruptible and immortal Commander-in-chief, who fell 
by an assassin's hand in the capital, and thus died that his coun- 
try might live." 

The hour having arrived when, by understanding of the House, 
the discussion should close, Mr. Stevens closed the debate with a 
short speech. " I am glad," said he, " to sec great unanimity 
among the Union friends in this House on all the provisions of 
this joint resolution except the third one. I am not very much 
gratified to'see any division among our friends on that which I 
consider the vital proposition of them all. Without that, it 
amounts to nothing. I do not care the snap of my finger w4iether 
it be passed or not if that be stricken out. I should be sorry to 
find that that provision was stricken out, because, before any 
portion of this can be put into operation, there will be, if not a 
Herod, a worse than Herod elsewhere to obstruct our actions. 
That side of the. house will be filled with yelling secessionists 
and hissing copper-heads. Give us the third section or give us 
nothing. Po not balk us with the pretense of an amendment 
which throws the Union into the hands of the enemy before it 
becomes consolidated. Do not, I pray you, admit those who 
have slaughtered half a million of our countrymen until their 
clothes are dried, and until they are reclad. I do not wish to 
sit side by side with men whose garments smell of the blood 
of my kindred. Gentlemen seem to forget the scenes that were 
enacted here years ago. Many of you w^ere not here. But my 
friend from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] ought to have kept up his 
reading enough to have been familiar with the history of those 
days, when the men that you propose to admit occupied the 
other side "of the House ; w^hen the mighty Toombs, with his 
shaggy locks, headed a gang who, Avith shouts of defiance on 
this floor, rendered this a hell of legislation. 

"Ah, sir, it was but six years ago when they were here, just 
before they went out to join the armies of Catiline, just before they 
29 



450 THE THIRTT-JflJ^TH CO JV GUESS. 

left this hall. Those of you who were here then will remember 
the scene in which every Southern member, encouraged by their 
allies, came forth in one yelling body because a speech for free- 
dom was being made here; when weapons were drawn, and 
Barksdale's bowie-knife gleamed before our eyes. Would you 
liave these men back again so soon to reenact those scenes? 
Wait until I am gone, I pray you. I want not to go through 
it again. It will be but a short time for my colleague to wait. 
I hope he will not put us to that test." 

At the close of his remarks, Mr. Stevens moved the previous 
question. 

Mr. Garfield hoped that it would be voted down, that he might 
have an opportunity to oiFer a substitute for" the third section, 
forever excluding the persons therein specified "from holding 
any office of trust or profit under the Government of the United 
States." 

Nevertheless, the previous question was sustained, and a vote 
was taken on the joint resolution proposing the constitutional 
amendment as it came from the committee. The following are 
the yeas and nays: 

Yeas— Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Delos R Ashley, James M. 
Ashley, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, 
Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Boutwell, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, 
Reader W. Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook,-Cullom, Darling, 
Davis, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Dodge, Donnelly, Driggs, Du- 
mont, Eckley, Eggleston, Eliot, Farnsworth, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Gris- 
wold, Abnber C. Harding, Hart, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Holmes, Hooper, 
Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, James 
R. Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Julian, Kasson, 
Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham,,Kuykendall, Laflin, George' V. Lawrence, William 
Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, INIcClurg, Mclndoe, McKee, 
McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, New- 
ell, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Price, William 
H. Randall, Raymond, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, 
Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Spalding, Stevens, Stilwell, Thayer, Francis 
Thomas, John L. Thomas, Trowl^ridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, 
Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Warner, Elihu B. Washburne, Henry D. Wash- 
burn, William B. Washburn, Welker, Williams, James F. Wilson, Stephen 
F. Wilson, Windom, Woodbridge, and the Speaker — 128. 

Nays — Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Boycr, Chanler, Coffroth, Dawson, Eld- 
ridge, Finck, Glossbrcnner, Goodyear, Grider, Aaron Harding, Harris, 
Kerr, Latham, Le Blond, Marsliall, IMcCullough, Niblack, Phelps, Radford, 
Samuel J. Randall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosscau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, 



RECOKSTEVCTIOK AMEJ^DMEjYT. 451 

Smith, Strousc, Tabcr, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Whaley, Winfield, and 
Wright— 37. 

Applause on the floor and in the galleries greeted the announce- 
ment that two-thirds of the House having voted in the affirma- 
tive the joint resolution was passed. 

The heavy majority by which this measure passed the House 
indicated an effect of the President's steady opposition, the oppo- 
site of what was anticipated. The amendment secured two votes 
which were cast -against the Civil Eights Bill, while it lost no vote 
which that measure received. 

It is remarkable that the joint resolution should have been 
carried with such unanimity when so many Kcpublicans had ex- 
pressed dissatisfaction with the third section. This is accounted 
for, hoAvever, by the pressure of the previous question, in which 
fifteen Democrats joined forces with the radical Eepublicans to 
force the undivided issue upon the House. A large minority of 
the Republican members were thus prevented from voting against 
the clause disfranchising the late rebels until 1870. 

In the Senate, as will be seen, the amendment assumed a shape 
more in accordance with their wishes. 



452 THE THIRTT-JriJfTH CONGRESS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE RECOISSTRUCTIOISr AMENDMENT— IN THE SENATE. 

Difference between Discussions in the House and in the Senate — Mr. 
Sumner proposes to postpone — ^Mk. Howard takes Charge of the Asiend- 
MENT — Substitutes proposed — The Republicans in Council-t-The Dis- 
franchising Clause stricken out — Humorous Account by Mr. Hendricks 
— The Pain and Penalties of not holding Office — A Senator's Piety 
appealed to — Howe vs. Doolittle — Marketable Principles — Praise of 
the President — Mr. McDougall's Charity — ^Vote of the Senate — Con- 
currence IN the House. 

THE joint resolution providing for amendments to the Con- 
stitution in relation to the rights of citizens, the basis of 
representation, the disfranchisement of rebels, and the rejec- 
tion of the rebel debt, having passed the House of Eepresenta- 
tives on the 10th of May, awaited only similar action of the 
Senate to prepare it to go before the several State Legislatures for 
final consideration. A fortnight had elapsed before it was taken 
up by the Senate. That body was much behind the House of 
Representatives in the business of the session. Notwithstanding 
the great size of the latter, it was accustomed to dispatch business 
with much greater rapidity than the Senate. The hour rule, lim- 
iting the length of speeches, and the previous question putting a 
boundary upon debate, being part of the machinery of the House, 
caused legislation to go on to final completion, which would other- 
wise have been swallowed up and lost in interminable talk. 

The Senate, consisting of a smaller number, did not realize the 
need of such restrictions. Senators sometimes indulged them- 
selves in speeches of such length as, if permitted in the House, 
would have proved an insurmountable obstacle to legislation. 

The contrast between the discussions in the two houses of Con- 
gress was never more marked than in connection with the amend- 




tT-G.E.Penuei 







RECOJ^STRUCTIOJf AMEMDMEJfT. 453 

« 
nient relating to Teconstructiou. lu this case the members of the 
House by special rule limited themselves to half an hour in the 
delivery of their speeches, which were consequently marked by 
great pertinency and condensation. In the Senate the speeches 
were in some instances limited only by the physical ability of the 
speakers to proceed. In one instance — the case of Garrett Davis 
— a speech was prolonged four hours, occupying all that part of 
the day devoted to the discussion. The limits of a volume would 
be inadequate for giving more than a mere outline of a discussion 
conducted upon such principles, and protracted through a period 
of more than two weeks. 

The joint resolution was taken up by the Senate on the 23d of 
May. Mr. Sumner 2)referred that the consideration of the ques- 
tion should be deferred until the first of July. " We were aisle," 
said he, " to have a better proposition at the end of April than 
we had at the end of March, and I believe we shall be able to 
accept a better proposition just as the weeks proceed. It is one 
of the greatest questions that has ever been presented in the his- 
tory of our country or of any country. It should be approached 
carefully and solemnly, and with the assurance we have before us 
all the testimony, all the facts, every thing that by any possibil- 
ity can shed any light upon it." 

The Senate proceeded, however, to the consideration of the 
joint resolution. Owing to the ill-health of Mr. Fessenden, who, 
as Chairman of the joint Committee on Reconstruction, would 
probably have taken charge of the measure, Mr. Howard opened 
the discussion and conducted the resolution in its passage through 
the Senate. He addressed the Senate in favor of all the sections 
of the proposed amendment except the third. " It is due to my- 
self," said he, " to say that I did not favor this section of the 
amendment in the committee. I do not believe, if adopted, it 
will be of any practical benefit to the country." 

Mr. Clark offered a substitute for the third section — the dis- 
franchising clause — the following amendment, which, with slight 
modifications, was ultimately adopted : 

" That no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or 
permitted to hold any office under the Government of the United States, 
who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution thereof, 
shall have voluntarily engaged in any insurrection or rebellion against the 
United States, or given aid or comfort thereto." 



4o4 THE THIRTY-KIKTR CONGRESS. 

* 

Mr. Wade offered a substitute for the Avliole bill, providing that 
no State shall abridge the rights of any person born within the 
United States, and that no class of persons, as to whose right to 
suffrage discrimination shall be made by any State except on the 
ground of intelligence, property, or rebellion, shall be included in 
the basis of representation. " I do not sujipose," said Mr. Wade, 
" that if I had been on the committee I could have drawn up a 
proposition so good as this is that they have brought forward ; 
and yet it seems to me, having the benefit of what they have 
done, that looking it over, reflecting upon it, seeing all its weak 
jioints, if it have any, I could, without having the ability of that 
committee, suggest amendments that would be beneficial." 

Eeferring to the third section of the joint resolution, Mr. "Wade 
remarked : " I am for excluding those who took any leading part 
in the rebellion from exercising any political j)Ower here or else- 
where now and forever ; but as that clause does not seem to effect 
that purpose, and will probably effect nothing at all, I do not 
think it is of any consequence that it should have a place in the 
measure." 

On the 24th of ISIay, INIr. Stewart spoke three hours on the 
constitutional amendment. He advocated the extension to the 
States lately engaged in rebellion of all civil and political 
rights on condition of their extending impartial suffrage to all 
their people. He announced his policy as that of " protection 
for the Union and the friends of the Union, and mercy to a 
fallen foe. Mercy pleaded generous amnesty; justice demanded 
impartial suffrage. I proposed pardon for the rebels and the 
ballot for the blacks." Of the Committee on Reconstruction, Mr. 
Stewart said : " I realize the difficulties which they have been 
called upon to encounter. They have acted a noble part in their 
efforts to harmonize conflicting opinions. I rejoice in the manner 
in which the report is presented, and the liberal spirit manifested 
Ijy the committee toward those who are anxious to aid in the 
perfection of their plan." 

Mr. Johnson moved to strike out the third section, without 
offering a substitute. 

Mr. Sherman offered a substitute for the second and third sec- 
tions, apportioning representation according to the number of 
male citizens qualified to vote by State laws, and ajDportioning 
direct taxes .according to the value of real and personal property. 



BECOWSTRUCTIOJf AMEJYDMEJ^T. 455 

The constitutional amendment was not again brought up for 
consideration in the Senate until Tuesday, May 29th. The 
several days during which the discussion was' suspended in the 
Senate were not fruitless in their effect upon the pending meas- 
ure. The amendment was carefully considered by the majority 
in special meetings, when such ameudations and improvements 
were agreed upon as would harmonize the action of the Republi- 
cans in the Senate. 

The first action of the Senate, when the subject was resumed, 
was to vote upon Mr. Johnson's motion to strike out the third 
section, which was passed unanimously — yeas, 43; nays, 0. 

Mr. Howard, acting for the committee, then offered a series of 
amendments to the joint resolution under consideration. The 
first of these provided for the insertion as a part of section one, 
the following clause: 

"All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they 
reside." 

Another modification moved by Mr. Howard was the inser- 
tion, in place of the third section already stricken out, a clause 
disabling certain classes of rebels from holding federal offices. 
This amendment was substantially the same as that previously 
proposed by Mr. Clark. 

It was proposed to Amend section four, which, as passed by 
the House, simply repudiated the rebel debt, by inserting the 
following clause : 

"The obligations of the United States incurred in supj^ressing insurrec- 
tion, or in defense of the Union, or for payment of bounties or pensions 
incident thereto, shall remain inviolate." 

Such were the amendments to the pending measure which the 
majority saw proper to propose. 

At a subsequent period of the debate, Mr. Hendricks, in a 
speech against the joint resolution, gave his view of the manner 
in which these amendments were devised. Being sjioken, in good 
humor, by one whom a fellow-Senator once declared to be " the 
best-natured man in the Senate," and having, withal, a certain 
appropriateness to this point, his remarks are here presented: 

" For three days the Senate-chamber was silent, but the discuss- 



456 TEE THIBTY-JflJfTH COJfCfBESS. 

ions were transferred to another room of the Capitol, with closed 
doors and darkened windows, where party leaders might safely 
contend for a political and party policy. When Senators re- 
turned to their seats, I was curious to obsei;ve who had won and 
who lost in the party lottery. The dark brow of the Senator 
from New Hampshire [Mr. Clark] was lighted with a gleam of 
pleasure. His proposed substitute for the third section was the 
marked feature of the measure. But upon the lofty brow of the 
Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] there rested a cloud of dis- 
appointment and grief. His bantling, which he had named uni- 
versal amnesty and universal suffrage, which he had so often 
dressed and undressed in the presence of the Senate, the darling 
oifspring of his brain, was dead ; it had died in the caucus ; and 
it was left to the sad Senator only to hope that it might not be 
his last. Upon the serene countenance of the Senator from 
Maine, the Chairman of the Fifteen, there rested the comj)OSure 
of the highest satisfaction; a plausible political platform had 
been devised, and there Avas yet hope for his party." 

On the 30th of May, the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, 
proceeded in the consideration of the constitutional amendment. 
Tlie several clauses were taken up separately and in order. 

Mr. Doolittle was desirous of amending the first section, relat- 
ing to the rights of citizens, by inserting a clause excepting from 
its operation " Indians not taxed." His proposition was rejected. 

"The Committee of Fifteen," said Mr. Doolittle, referring to 
the Civil Rights Bill, " fearing that this declaration by Congress 
was without validity unless a constitutional amendment should 
be brought forward to enforce it, have thought proper to report 
this amend mentv" 

"I want to say to the honorable Senator," Mr. Fessenden re- 
plied, " that he is drawing entirely upon his imagination. There 
is not one word of correctness in all that he is saying ; not a 
particle; not a scintilla; not the beginning of truth." 

The first and second sections of the amendment were accepted 
in Committee of the Whole, with little further attempt at alteration. 

The third section, cutting off late Confederate officials from 
eligibility to Federal offices, provoked repeated attempts to mod- 
ify and emasculate it. Among them was a motion by ISIr. Sauls- 
bury to amend the final clause by adding that the President, by 
the exercise of the pardoning power, may remove the disability. 



RECOJ^Sl R VCTIOK AMEKDMEKT. 457 

It angured the final success of the entire amendment in the 
Senate, that the nnmorous propositions to amend, made by those 
unfavorable to the measure, were voted down by majorities of 
more than three-fourths. 

Mr. Doolittle, speaking in opposition to the third section, said 
that it was putting a new punishment upon all persons embraced 
within its provisions. " If," said he, " by a constitutional amend- 
ment, you impose a new punishment upon oifenders who are 
guilty of crime already, you wipe out the old punishment as to 
them. Now, I do not propose to wipe out the penalties that 
these men have incurred by their treason against the Government. 
I would punish a sufficient number of them to make treason 
odious." 

" How many would you like to hang ? " .asked Mr. Nye. 

" You stated the other day that five or six would be enough 
to hang," replied Mr. Doolittle. 

"Do you acquiesce in that?" asked Mr. Nye. 

" I think I ought to be satisfied," replied Mr. Doolittle, " if 
you are satisfied with five or six. 

" The insertion of this section," said Mr. Doolittle, continuing 
his remarks, " tends to prevent the adoption of the amendment 
by a sufficient number of States to ratify it. What States to be 
affected by this amendment will ratify it ? " 

" Four will accept that part of it," said Mr. James H. Lane. 

" What four ? " asked Mr. Doolittle. 

"Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana," replied Mr. 
Lane. " I saw some gentlemen on Monday from Tennessee, who 
told me that this particular clause would be the most popular 
thing that could be tendered. And the very men that you want 
to hang ought to accept it joyfully in lieu of their hanging." 
[Laughter.] 

"I do not know who those particular gentlemen were," said 
Mr. Doolittle. " Were they the gentlemen that deserved hanging 
or not?" 

" They were Conservatives from Tennessee," replied Mr. Lane. 

" I deem this section as the adoption of a new punishment as 
to the persons who are embraced within its provisions," said Mr. 
Doolittle. 

" They seem to have peculiar notions in Wisconsin in regard 
to officers," said Mr. Trumbull ; " and the Senator who has just 



458 THE TEIBTY-KIMTH CONGRESS. 

taken his seat regards it as a punishment that a man can not hold 
an office. Whv, sir, how many suffering people there must be in 
this laud ! He says this is a bill of pains and penalties because 
certain persons can not hold office; and he even seems to think 
it would be preferable, in some instances, to be hanged. He wants 
to know of the Senator from Ohio if such persons are to be ex- 
cepted. This clause, I suppose, will not embrace those who are 
to be hanged. When hung, they will cease to suffer the pains 
and penalties of being kept out of office. 

"AVho ever heard of such a proposition as that laid down by 
the Senator from Wisconsin, that a bill excluding men from office 
is a bill of pains, and penalties, and punishment? The Consti- 
tution of the United States declares that no one but a native-born 
citizen of the United States shall be President of the United States. 
Does, then, every person living in this land who does not happen 
to have been born within its jurisdiction undergo pains, and pen- 
alties, and punishment all his life because by the Constitution 
he is ineligible to the Presidency ? This is the Senator's posi- 
tion." 

Mr. Wiiley spoke in favor of the pending clause of the joint 
resolution. " I hope," said he, " that we shall hear no more out- 
cry about the injustice, the inhumanity, and the want of Christian 
spirit in thus incorporating into our Constitution precautionary 
measures that will forever prohibit these unfaithful men from 
again having any part in the Government." 

" The honorable Senator," remarked Mr. Davis in reply, " is a 
professor of the Christian religion, a follower of the lowly and 
humble Redeemer; but it seems to me that he forgot all the 
spirit of his Christian charity and faith in the tenor of the re- 
marks which he made." 

" This cry for blood and vengeance," exclaimed Mr. Saulsbury, 
" can not last forever. The eternal God who sits above, whose 
essence is love, and whose chief attribute is mercy, says to all his 
creatures, whether in the open daylight or in the silent hours of 
the night, ' Be charitable ; be merciful.' " 

Mr. Doolittle proposed two amendments to section three : the 
first to limit its application to those who " volxintcmhj engaged in 
rebellion," and the second to except those " who have duly received 
amnesty and pardon." 

Tliese propositions were both rejected by large majorities, only 



HECOJ^STBUCTIOJV AMEMDMEMT. 459 

ten Senators voting for them. The third section, as proposed by 
Mr. Howard, was then adopted by a vote of thirty against ten. 

The death of General Scott having been tlic occasion of an 
adjonrnmcnt of Congress, the consideration of the constitutional 
amendment was not resumed until the 4th of June. ISIr. Hen- 
dricks moved to amend by including in the basis of representation 
in the Southern States three-fifths of the freedmen. Mr. Van 
Winkle oifered an amendment providing that no person not ex- 
cluded from office by the terms of the third section shall be liable 
to any disability or penalty for treason after a term of years. 
Both of these propositions were rejected by the Senate. 

On the 5th of June, Mr. Poland, Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Howe 
addressed the Senate in favor of the constitutional amendment. 
Mr. Poland did not expect to be able to say any thing after six 
months' discussion of this subject. He took more hopeful views 
of the President's tractability than many others. "Although 
these propositions," said he, " may not, in all respects, correspond 
with the views of the President, I believe he will feel it to be 
his patriotic duty to acquiesce in the jslan proposed, and give his 
.powerful influence and support to procure their adoption." 

"Aliile it is not the plan that I would have adopted," said 
Mr. Stewart, "still it is the best that I can get, and contains 
many excellent provisions." 

"I shall vote for the Constitutional amendment," said Mr. 
Howe, " regretfully, but not reluctantly. I shall- vote for it re- 
gretfully, because it does not meet the emergency as I hoped the 
emergency would be met; but I shall not vote for it reluctantly, 
because it seems to me just now to be the only way in which the 
emergency can be met at all." 

An issue of some personal interest arose between Mr. Howe and 
his colleague, Mr. Doolittle, which led them somewhat aside from 
the regular channel of discussion. 

"He has been a most fortunate politician," said Mr. Howe, 
"always to happen to have just those convictions which bore the 
highest price in the market." 

"That I ever intended in the slightest degree," replied Mr. 
Doolittle, " to swerve in my political action for the sake of offices 
or the price of offices in the market, is a statement wholly with- 
out foundation." 

Mr. Howe had said in substance that in 1848 Mr. Doolittle 



460 THE TMIRTT-JflJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

was acting -with the Free Democratic party iu New York, which 
was stronger tlian the Democratic party in that State. In 1852, 
M'hen he lefl the Free Democratic party, and acted with the 
Democratic party in "Wisconsin, the Democratic party was in the 
majority in that State. He did not leave the Democratic j)arty 
and join the Republican party in 1854, but only in 1856, and 
then Wisconsin was no longer a Democratic State. 

]\Ir. Doolittle, after having given a detailed account of his pre- 
vious political career, remarked : " During the last six months, in 
the State of Wisconsin, no man has struggled harder than I have 
struggled to save the Union party, to save it to its platform, to 
save it to its principles, to save it to its supremacy. For six 
mouths, from one end of Wisconsin to the other — ay, from Boston 
to St. Paul — by every one of a certain class of newspapers I have 
been denounced as a traitor to the Union party because I saved 
it from defeat. Sir, it is not the first time in the history of the 
world that men have turned in to crucify their savior." 

On the same day, June 6th, Messrs. Hendricks, Sherman, 
Cowan, and others having participated in the discussion, the Sen- 
ate voted on another amendment oifered by Mr. Doolittle, appor- 
tioning Eepresentatives, after the census of 1870, according to the 
number of legal voters in each State by the laws thereof. This 
proposition was rejected — yeas, 7 ; nays, 31. 

On the 7th of June, Mr. Garrett Davis occupied the entire time 
devoted to the constitutional amendment in ojjposing that meas- 
ure, denouncing Congress, and j)raising the President. "There 
is a very great state of backwardness," said he, " in both houses 
of Congress in relation to the transaction of the legitimate, proper, 
and useful portion of the public business; but as to the business 
that is of an illegitimate and mischievous character, and that is 
calculated to produce results deleterious to the present and the 
future of the whole country, there has been a good deal, much too 
much, of jJrogress made." 

Of President Johnson Mr. Davis said : " He seems to be the 
man for the occasion ; and his ability, resources, courage, and pa- 
triotism have developed to meet its great demands. If this ark 
which holds the rights and liberties of the American people is to 
be rescued and saved, he will be one of the chief instruments in 
the great work, and his glory and fame will be deathless." 

On the 8th of June, the last day of the discussion, the consti- 



. RECOKSTRJJCTIOK AMEJ^DMEMT. 46 1 

tutional amendment was opposed by ISIcssrs. Johnson, McDougall, 
and Hendricks, and defended by Messrs. Henderson, Yates, and 
Howard. 

" Let us bring back the South," said Mr. Johnson, in closing 
his remarks, " so as to enable her to remove the desolation which 
has gone through her borders, restore her industry, attend to 
her products, instead of keeping her in a state of subjection 
without the slightest necessity. Peace once existing throughout 
the land, the restoration of all rights brought about, the Union 
will be at once in more prosperous existence than it ever was ; 
and throughout the tide of time, as I believe, nothing in the 
future will ever cause us to dream of dissolution, or of subjecting 
any part, through the powerful instrumentality of any other part, 
to any dishonoring humiliation." 

" I went down once on the Mississippi," remarked ISIr. Mc- 
Dougall, " at the opening of the war. I met a general of the 
Confederate army, and I took him by the hand and took him 
to my state-room, on board of my gun-boat. Said he, ' General,' 
throwing his arms around me, * how hard it is that you and I have 
to fight.' That was the generosity of a combatant. I repeated to 
him, 'It is hard,' and. he and I drank a bottle of wine or two — 
just as like as not. [Laughter.] This thing of bearing malice 
is one of the wickedest sins that men can bear under their 
clothes." 

Speaking of the third section, which had encountered great 
opposition, as inflicting undue punishment upon prominent reb- 
els, Mr. Henderson said : " If this provision be all, it will be an 
act of the most stupendous mercy that ever mantled the crimes of 
rebellion." 

" Let us suppose a case," said Mr. Yates. " Here is a man — 
"Winder, or Dick Turner, or some other notorious character. He 
has been the cause of the death of that boy of yours. He has 
shot at him from behind an ambuscade, or he has starved him to 
death in the Andersonville prison, or he has made him lie at 
Belle Isle, subject to disease and death from the miasma by which 
he was surrounded. When he is upon trial and the question is^ 
'Sir, are you guilty, or are you not guilty?' and he raises his 
blood-stained hands, deep-dyed in innocent and patriotic blood, 
the Senator from Pennsylvania rises and says, ' For God's sake ! 
do not deprive him of the right to go to the legislature.' The 



462 ' THE TEIBTY-J{IKTR COJVGBESS. ' 

idea is that if a man has forfeited his life, it is too great a pun- 
ishment to deprive him of the privilege of holding office." 

Speaking of radicalism, Mr. Yates remarked : " My fear is not 
that this Congress will be too radical ; I am not afraid of this 
Congress being shij)wrecked upon any proposition of radicalism ; 
but I fear from timid and cowardly conservatism which will not 
risk a great people to take their destiny in their own hands, and 
to settle this great question upon the principles of equality, jus- 
tice, and liberality. That is my fear." 

Mr. Doolittle moved that the several sections of the amend- 
ment be submitted to the States as separate articles. This motion 
was rejected — yeas, 11 ; nays, 33. 

The vote was finally taken upon the adoption of the constitu- 
tional amendment as a whole. It j^assed the Senate by a major- 
ity of more than two-thirds, as follows : 

Yeas — Messrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Ed- 
munds, Fessenden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Howard, Howe, 
Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, 
Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, 
Willey, Williams, Wilson, and Yates— 33. 

Nats — Messrs. Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, Mc- 
Dougall, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, and Van Winkle — 11. 

On the 13th of June, the joint resolution, having been modified 
in the Senate, reaj)peared in the House for the concurrence of that 
branch of Congress. There was a short discussion of the measure 
as amended in the Senate. Messrs. Rogers, Finck, and Harding 
spoke against the resolution, and Messrs. Spalding, Henderson, 
and Stevens in its favor. 

" The first proposition," said Mr. Rogers, " was tame in in- 
iquity, injustice, and violation of fundamental liberty to the one 
before us," 

" I say," said Mr. Finck, " it is an outrage upon the people of 
those States who were compelled to give their aid and assistance 
in the rebellion. You propose to inflict upon these peojjle a 
punishment not known to the law in existence at the time any 
offense may have been committed, but after the offense has been 
committed." 

" Let me tell you," said Mr. Harding, " you are jjrcparing for 
revolutions after revolutions. I warn you there will be no peace 



RECOJTSTR VCTIOM AMENDMENT. 403 

in this countiy until each State be allowed to control its own citi- 
zens. If you take that from them, what care I for the splendid 
machinery of a national p;ovcrnment?" 

Mr. Stevens briefly addressed the House before the final vote 
was taken. He had just risen from a sick-bed, and ridden to the 
Capitol at the peril of his life. During the quarter of an hour 
which he occupied in speaking, the solemnity was such as is sel- 
dom seen in that assembly. Members left their seats, and gath- 
ered closely around the venerable man to hear his brave and solemn 
words. . From his youth he had hoped to see our institutions 
freed from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of 
rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor and the superior 
caste of the rich. But that bi'ight dream had vanished. "I 
find," said he, " that we shall be obliged to be content with patch- 
ing up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it in 
many of its parts to be S'wept through by the tempests, the frosts, 
and the storms of desjiotism." 

It might be inquired why, with his opinions, he accepted so 
imperfect a proposition. " Because," said he, " I live among men, 
and not among angels ; among men as intelligent,, as determined, 
and as independent as myself, who, not agreeing with me, do not 
choose to yield their opinions to mine." With an enfeebled voice, 
yet with a courageous air, he charged the resi3onsibility for that 
day's patchwork upon the Executive. " With his cordial assist- 
ance," said INIr. Stevens, " the rebel States might have been made 
model republics, and this nation an empire of universal freedom ; 
but he preferred 'restoration' to 'reconstruction.'" 

The question was taken, and the joint resolution passed the 
House by a vote of over three-fourths — 120 yeas to 32 nays. 
From the necessary absence of many members, the vote was not 
full, yet the relative majority in favor of this measure was greater 
than in the former vote. 

The following is the Constitutional Amendment as it passed 
both Houses of Congress : 

"ARTICLE — . 

"Sec. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject 
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States aud of the State 
wherein they reside. No State ajjall make or enforce any law which shall 
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor 
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due 



464 THE TEIBTY-JVIJfTH COJfGBESS. 

process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal pro- 
tection of the laws. 

"Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States 
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons 
in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at 
any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of 
the United States, Kepresentatives in Congress, the executive and judicial 
officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to 
any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, 
and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for par- 
ticipation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein 
shall be reduced in the proportion which tl^e number of such male citizens 
shall bear to the whole -number of such male citizens twenty-one years of 
age in such State. 

" Sec. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or 
elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, 
under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken 
an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of ihe United States, or 
as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer 
of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have en- 
gaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort 
to the enemies thereof But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each 
House, remove such disability. 

" Sec. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized 
by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for 
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. 
But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt 
or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United 
States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave ; but all such 
debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void. 

"Sec. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legis- 
lation, the provisions of this article." 

The President was requested to send the Amendment to the 
several States for ratification. 

On the 2 2d of June, President Johnson sent a message to Con- 
gress informing them that the Secretary of State had transmitted 
to the Governors of the several States certified copies of the pro- 
posed amendment. " These steps/' said the President, " are to be 
considered as purely ministerial, and in no sense whatever com- 
mitting the Executive to an approval of the recommendation of 
the amendment." It seemed to the President a serious objection 
to the proposition " that the joint resolution was not submitted by 
the two houses for the approval of the President, and that of the 



BECOKSTRTJCTION AMEJfDMEJ^T. 465 

thirty-six States which constitute the Union, eleven are excluded 
from representation." 

The President having no jjower under the Constitution to veto 
a joint resolution submitting , a constitutional amendment to the 
people, this voluntary expression of opinion could not have been 
designed to have an influence upon the action of Congress. The 
document could have been designed by its author only as an ar- 
gument with i\\c State Legislatures against the ratification of the 
Constitutional Amendment, and as a notice to the Southern peo- 
ple that they were badly treated. 

The President's message was received by Congress without 
comment, and referred to the Committee on Eeconstruction. 



30 



AGO THE THIRTT'J^I:N'TH COJfGEESS. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

Ax IMPORTANT StATE PaPER — WoRK OF THE COMMITTEE — DIFFICULTY OF 
OBTAINING INFORMATION — tThEORY OF THE PRESIDENT — TAXATION AND 

Representation — Disposition and doings op the Southern People — 
Conclusion of the Committee — Practical Recommendations. 

ON the 8th of June, the day on which the constitutional 
amendment passed the Senate, the -report of the joint Com- 
mittee on Reconstruction was presented to Congress. Tliis 
important State paper had been looked for with great interest 
and no little anxiety by the people in all parts of the country. 
It was drawn up with marked ability, and was destined to have 
a most important bearing upon public opinion in reference to the 
great subject Avhich, in all its bearings, it brought to the view of 
Congress and the country. 

The committee having had unrivalled opportunities for obtain- 
ing information, their conclusions commanded the respect of those 
v/ho differed from them, and obtained the almost unanimous ap- 
proval of the party which carried the war to a successful close. 

Referring to the nature of the work which was required of 
them, the committee said : 

"Such an investigation, covering so large an extent of territory, and in- 
volving so many important considerations, must necessarily require no tri- 
fling labor, and consume a very considerable amount of time. It must em- 
brace the condition in which those States vrere left at the close of the war; 
the measures which have been taken toward the reorganization of civil gov- 
ernment, and the disposition of the people toward the United States — in a 
word, their fitness to take an active part in the administration of national 
affairs." 

The first step to be taken by- the committee, that of obtaining 
required information, and the difficulties attending it, were thus 
set forth : 



REPORT OX RECOJ^STRUCTIOjY. 467 

'* A call Avas made on the President for the information in his possession 
as to what had been done, in order that Congress might judge for itself as 
to the grounds of belief expressed by him in the fitness of States recently 
in rebellion to participate fully in the conduct of national affairs. This in- 
formation -was not immediately communicated. When the response was 
finally made, some six weeks after your committee had been in actual 
session, it was found that the evidence upon which the Pi-csidcnt seemed to 
have based his suggestions was incomplete and unsatisfactory. Authen- 
ticated copies of the constitutions and ordinances adopted by the conven- 
tions in three of the States had been submitted; extracts from newspapers 
furnished scanty information as to the action of one other State, and nothing 
appears to have been communicated as to the remainder. There was no 
evidence of the loyalty of those who participated in these conventions, and 
in one State alone was any j^roposition made to submit the action of the 
convention to the final judgment of the people. 

"Failing to obtain the desired information, and left to grope for light 
wherever it might be found, your committee did not deem it either advisable 
or safe to adopt, without further examination, the suggestions of the Presi- 
dent, more especially as he had not deemed it expedient to remove the mil- 
itary force, to suspend martial law, or to restore the writ of habeas corims, 
but still thought it necessary to exercise over the people of the rebellious 
States his military power and jurisdiction. This conclusion derived greater 
force from the fact, undisputed, that in all those States, except Tennessee, 
and, perhaps, Arkansas, the elections which were held for State officers and 
members of Congress had resulted almost universally in the defeat of can- 
didates who had been true to the Union, and in the election of notorious 
and unpardoned rebels — men who could not take the prescribed oath of 
office, and who made no secret of their hostility to the Government and the 
people of the United States. 

" Under these circumstances, any thing like hasty action would have been 
as dangerous as it was obviously unwise. It appeared to your committee 
that but one course remained, viz. : to investigate carefully and thoroughly 
the state of feeling and opinion existing among the people of these States; 
to ascertain how far their pretended loyalty could be relied upon, and thence 
to infer whether it would be safe to admit them at once to a full participa- 
tion in the Government they had fought for four years, to destroy. It was 
an equally important inquiry whether their restoration to their former rela- 
tions with the United States should only be granted upon certain conditions 
and guarantees, which would effectually secure the nation against a recur- 
rence of evils so disastrous as those from which it had escaped at so enor- 
mous a sacrifice." 

The theory of the President, and those who demanded the im- 
mediate admission of Southern Senators and Kepresentatives, was 
stated in the report to amount to this: 

" That, inasmuch as the lately insurgent States had no legal right to sep- 
arate themselves from the Union, they still retain their positions as States, 



4G8 THE TEIETY-XIKTR COJTGBESS. 

and, consequently, the people thereof have a right to immediate representa- 
tion in Congress, without the imposition of any conditions whatever; and, 
further, that until such admission, Congress has no right to tax them for the 
support of the Government. It has even been contended that, until such 
admission, all legislation affecting their interests is, if not unconstitutional, 
at least unjustifiable and oppressive. 

"It is moreover contended that, from the moment when rebellion lays 
down its arms, and actual hostilities cease, all political rights of rebellious 
communities are at once restored; that because the people of a State of the 
Union were once an organized community within the Union, they necessarily 
so remain, and their right to be represented in Congress at any and all 
times, and to participate in the government of the country under all circum- 
stances, admits of neither question nor dispute. If this is indeed true, then 
is the Government of the United States powerless for its own protection, and 
flagrant rebellion, carried to the extreme of civil war, is a pastime wdiich 
any State may play at, not only certain that it can lose nothing, in any event, 
but may be the gainer by defeat. If rebellion succeeds, it accomplishes its 
purpose and destroys the Government. If it fails, the war has been barren 
of results, and the battle may be fought out in the legislative halls of the 
country. Treason defeated in the field has only to take possession of Con- 
gress and the Cabinet." 

The committee in this report asserted : 

"It is more than idle, it is a mockery to contend that a people who liave 
thrown ofi" their allegiance, destroyed the local government which bound 
their States to the Union as members thereof, defied its authority, refused to 
execute its laws, and abrogated every provision which gave them political 
rights within the Union, still retain through all the perfect and entire right 
to resume at their own will and pleasure all their privileges within the Union, 
and especially to participate in its government and control the conduct of its 
affairs. To admit such a principle for one moment would be to declare that 
treason is always master and loyalty a blunder." 

To a favorite argument of the advocates of immediate restora- 
tion of the rebel States, the report presented the following reply : 

"That taxation should be only with the consent of the people, through 
their own representatives, is a cardinal principle of all free governu^nts ; 
but it is not true that taxation and representation must go together under 
all circumstances and at every moment of time. The people of the District 
of Columbia and of the Territories are taxed, although not represented in 
Congress. If it be true that the people of the so-called Confederate States 
have no right to throw off the authority of the United States, it is equally 
true that they are bound at all times to share the burdens of Government. 
They can not, either legally or equitably, refuse to bear their just proportion 
of these burdens by voluntarily abdicating their rights and privileges as 
States of the Union, and refusing to bo represented in the councils of the 



REPORT O.Y rx^ECOjYSTBUCTIOJf. 46P 

nation, much less by rebellion against national authority and levying war. 
To hold that by so doing they could escape taxation, would be to oflFer a 
premium for insurrection — to reward instead of punishing treason." 

Upon the important subject of representation, which had occu- 
pied much of the attention of the committee and much of the 
time of Congress, the report held the following words : 

"The increase of representation, necessarily resulting fi'om the abolition 
of slavery, was considered the most important element in the questions aris- 
ing out of the changed condition of aiffrtrs, and the necessity for some 
fundamental action in this regard seemed imperative. It appeared to your 
committee that the rights of these persons, by whom the basis of represen- 
tation had been thus increased, should be recognized by the General Gov- 
ernment. While slaves they were not considered as having any rights, civil 
or political. It did not seem just or proper that all the political advantages 
derived from their becoming free should be confined to their former masters, 
who had fought against the Union, and withheld from themselves, who had 
always been loyal. Slavery, by building up a ruling and dominant class, 
had produced a spirit of oligarchy adverse to republican institutions, which 
finally inaugurated civil war. The tendency of continuing the domination 
of such a class, by leaving it in the exclusive possession of political power, 
would be to encourage the same spirit and lead to a similar result. Doubts 
were entertained whether Congress had power, even under the amended 
Constitution, to prescribe the qualifications of voters in a State, or could act 
directly on the subject. It was doubtful in the opinion of your committee 
whether the States would consent to surrender a power they had always 
exercised, and to which they were attached. As the best, not the only 
method of surmounting all difficulty, and as eminently just and proper in 
itself, your committee comes to the conclusion that political power should be 
possessed in all the States exactly in proportion as the right of suSrage 
should be granted without distinction of color or race. This, it was thought, 
would leave the whole question with the people of each State, holding out 
to all the advantages of increased political power as an inducement to allow 
all to participate in its exercise. Such a proposition would be in its nature 
gentle and persuasive, and would tend, it was hoped, at no distant day, to 
an equal participation of all, without distinction, in all the rights and priv- 
ileges of citizenship, thus afi'ording a fuU and adequate protection to aU 
classes of citizens, since we would have, through the ballot-box, the power 
of self-protection. 

'•Holding these views, your committee prepared an amendment to the 
Constitution to carry out this idea, and submitted the same to Congress. 
Unfortunately, as we think, it did not receive the necessary constitutional 
support in the Senate, and, therefore, could not be proposed for adoption by 
the States. The principle involved in that amendment is, however, believed 
to be sound, and your committee have again proposed it in another form, 
hoping that it may receive the approbation of CongTess." 



470 THE THIUTY-KIKTE COJ{GUESS. 

The action of the people of the insurrectionaiy States, and then- 
responses to the President's appeals, as showing their degree of 
preparation for immediate admission into Congress, was thus set 
forth in the report : 

'• So far as the disposition of the people of the insurrectionary States and 
the probability of their adopting measures conforming to the changed con- 
dition of affairs can he inferred, from the papers submitted by the President 
as the basis of his action, the prospects are far from encouraging. It ap- 
pears quite clear that the antislavery amendments, both to the State and 
Federal Constitutions, were adopted with reluctance by the bodies which did 
adopt them; and in some States they have been either passed by in silence 
or rejected. The language of all the provisions and ordinances of the States 
on the subject amounts to nothing more than an unwilling admission of an 
unwelcome truth. As to the ordinance of secession, it is in some cases de- 
clared 'null and void,' and in others simply 'repealed,' and in no case is a 
refutation of this deadly heresy considered worthy of a place in the new 
constitutions. 

"If, as the President assumes, these insurrectionary States were, at the 
close of the war, wholly without State governments, it would seem that be- 
fore being admitted to participate in the direction of public affairs, such 
governments should be regularly organized. Long usage has established, 
and numerous statutes have pointed out, the mode in which this should be 
done. A convention to frame a form of government should be assembled 
under competent- authority. Ordinarily this authority emanates from Con- 
gress ; but under the peculiar circumstances, your committee is not disposed 
to criticise the President's action in assuming the power exercised by him 
in this regard. 

"The convention, when assembled, should frame a constitution of govern- 
ment, which should be submitted to the people for adoption. If adopted, a 
Legislature should be convened to pass the laws necessary to carry it into 
effect. When a State thus organized claims representation in Congress, the 
election of Kepresentatives should be provided for by law, in accordance 
with the laws of Congress regulating representation, and the proof, that the 
action taken has been in conformity to law, should be submitted to Congress. 

" In no case have these essential preliminary steps been taken. The con- 
ventions assembled seem to have assumed that the Constitution which had 
been repudiated and overthrown, was still in existence, and operative to 
constitute the States members of the Union, and to have contented them- 
selves with such amendments as' they were informed were requisite in order 
to insure their return to an immediate participation in the Government of 
the United States. And without waiting to ascertain, whether the people 
they represented would adopt even the proposed amendments, fhey at once 
called elections of Kepresentatives to Congress in nearly all instances before 
an Executive had been chosen to issue certificates of election under the 
State laws, and such elections as were held were ordered by the conven- 
tions. In one instance, at least, the writs of election were signed by the 



REPORT OJV RECOJ^STRUCTIOJ^. 47 1 

provisional governor. Glaring irregularities and unwarranted assumptions 
of power are manifest in several cases, particularly in South Carolina, 
where the convention, although disbanded by the provisional governor on 
the ground that it was a revolutionary body, assumed to district the State." 

The report thus sets forth the conduct naturally expected of 
the Southern people, as contrasted with their actual doings : 

"They should exhibit in their acts something more than unwillinf sub- 
mission to an unavoidable necessity — a feeling, if not cheerful, certainly not 
offensive and defiant, and should evince an entire repudiation of all hostility 
to the General Government by an acceptance of such just and favorable 
conditions as that Government should tliink the public safety demands. 
Has this been done ? Let us look at the facts shown by the evidence taken 
by the committee. Hardly had the war closed before the people of these 
insurrectionary States come forward and hastily claim as a right the priv- 
ilege of participating at once in that Government which they had for four 
years been fighting to overthrow. 

"Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State govern- 
ments, they at once place in power leading rebels, unrepentant and unpar- 
doned, excluding with contempt those who had manifested an attachment to 
the Union, and preferring, in many instances, those who had rendered them- 
selves tiie most obnoxious. In the face of the law requiring an oath which 
would necessarily exclude all such men from Federal office, they elect, with 
very few exeptions, as Senators and Representatives in Congress, men who 
had actively participated in the rebellion, insultingly denouncing the law as 
unconstitutional. 

"It is only necessary to instance the election to the Senate of the late 
Vice President of the Confederacy — a man who, against his own declared 
convictions, had lent all the weight of his acknowledged ability and of his 
influence as a most prominent public man to the cause of the rebellion, and 
who, unpardoned rebel as he is, with that. oath staring him in the face, had 
the assurance to lay his credentials on the table of the Senate. Other rebels 
of scarcely less note or notoriety were selected from other quarters. Pro- 
fessing no repentance, glorying apparently in the crime they had committed, 
avowing still, as the uncontradicted testimony of Mr. Stephens and many 
others proves, an adherence to the pernicious doctrines of secession, and 
declaring that they yielded only to necessity, they insist with unanimous 
voice upon their rights as States, and proclaim they will submit to no con- 
ditions whatever preliminary to their resumption of power under that Con- 
stitution vrhich they still claim the right to repudiate." 

Finally the report thus presented the " conclusion of the com- 
mittee : " 

" That the so-called Confederate States are not at present entitled to rep- 
resentation in the Congress of the United States ; that before allowing such 



472 THE TEIRTY-KINTR COJ^GRESS. 

representation, adequate security for future peace and safety should be re- 
quired; that this can only be found in such changes of the organic law as 
shall determine the civil rights and privileges of all citizens in all parts of 
the republic, shall place representation on an equitable basis, shall fix a 
6ti<'ma upon treason, and protect the loyal people against future claims for 
the expenses incurred in support of rebellion and for manumitted slaves, 
together with an express grant of power in Congress to enforce these pro- 
visions. To this end they have offered a joint resolution for amending the 
Constitution of the United States, and two several bills designed to carry the 
same into effect." 

The passage of the Constitutional Amendment by more than 
the necessary majority has been related. One of the bills to 
which reference is made in the above report — declaring certain 
officials of the so-called Confederate States ineligble to any office 
under the Government of the United States — "was placed in the 
amendment in lieu of the disfranchising clause. The other bill 
provided for " the restoration of the States lately in insurrection 
to their full rights " so soon as they should have ratified the pro- 
posed amendment. This bill was defeated in the House by a vote 
of 75 to 48. Congress thus refused to pledge itself in advance 
to make the amendment the sole test of the reiidmission of rebel 
States. Congress, however, clearly indicated a disposition to 
restore those States " at the earliest day consistent with the future 
peace and safety of the Union." The report and doings of the 
Committee of Fifteen, although by many impatiently criticised as 
dilatory, resulted, before the end of the first session of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress, in the reconstruction of one of the States lately 
in rebellion. 



BESTOBATIOM OF TEJ^J^ESSEE. 478 



• CHAPTER XX. 

RESTORATION OF TENNESSEE. 

Assembling of the Tennessej; Legislature — Ratification of the Constitu- 
tional Amendment — Restoration of Tennessee proposed in Congress — 
The Government of Tennessee not Republic^,' — Protest against the 
Preamble — Passage in the House — New Preamble proposed — The Presi- 
dent's Opinion deprecated and disregarded — Passage in the Senate — 
The President's Approval and Protest — Admission of Tennessee Mem- 
bers — Mr. Patterson's Case. 

THE most important practical step in the work of reconstruc- 
tion taken by the Thirty-ninth Congress was the restoration 
of Tennessee to her relations to the Union. Of all the re- 
cently rebellious States, Tennessee was the first to give a favorable 
response to the overtures of Congress by ratifying the Constitu- 
tional Amendment. 

Immediately on the reception of the circular of the Secretary 
of State containing the proposed amendment, Governor Brownlow 
issued a proclamation summoning the Legislature of Tennessee to 
-assemble at Nashville on the 4th of July. 

There are eighty-four seats in the low^er branch of the Legis- 
lature of Tennessee. By the State Constitution, two-thirds of the 
seats are required to be full to constitute a quorum. The presence 
of fifty-six members seemed essential for the legal transaction of 
business. Every effort was made to prevent the assembling of the 
required number. The powerful influence of the President him- 
self was thrown in opposition to ratification. 

On the day of the assembling of the Legislature but fifty-two 
members voluntarily appeared. Two additional members were 
secured by arrest, so that the number nominally in attendance 
was fifty-four, and thus it remained for several days. It was 
ascertained that deaths and resignations had reduced the number 



4^4 THE THIRTY- J^INTH CONGRESS. 

of actual nieuibers to seventy-two, and a Union caucus deter- 
mined to declare that fifty-four members should constitute a quo- 
rum. Two more Union members opportunely arrived, swelling 
the number present in the Capitol to fifty-six. Neither persua- 
sion nor compulsion availed to induce the two " Conservative 
members " to occupy their seats, and the house was driven to the 
exjicdient of considering the members who were under arrest and 
confined in a committee room, as present in their places. This 
having been decided, the constitutional amendment was imme- 
diately ratified. Governor Brownlow immediately sent the fol- 
lowing telegraphic dispatch to Washington : 

"Nashville, Tennessee,' Thursday^ July 19 — 12 M. 
" To Hon. E. M. Stant07i, Secretary of War, Washmgton, D. C. 

"My comi^liments to the President. We have carried the Constitutional 
Amendment in the House. Vote, 43 to 18 ; two of his tools refusing to vote. 

"W. G. BROWNLOW." 

On the 19tli of July, the very day on which Tennessee voted 
to ratify the amendment, and immediately after the news was 
received in Washington, Mr. Bingham, in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, moved to reconsider a motion by which a joint resolu- 
tion relating to the restoration of Tennessee had been referred to 
the Committee on Reconstruction. 

This joint resolution having been drawn up in the early part 
of the session, was not adapted to the altered condition of aifairs 
resulting from the passage of the constitutional amendment in 
Congress. The motion to reconsider having passed, Mr. Bing- 
ham proposed the following substitute: 

" Joint resolution declaring Tennessee again entitled to Senators and 
Repi'esentatives in Congress. 

" Whereas, The State of Tennessee has in good faith ratified the article of 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed by the Thirty- 
ninth Congress to the Legislatures of the several States, and has also shown, 
to the satisfaction of Congress, by a proper spirit of obedience in the body 
of her people, her return to her due allegiance to the Government, laws, and 
authority of the United States : Therefore, 

"Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assemhled, That the State of Tennessee is hereby 
restored to her former, proper, practical relation to the Union, and again en- 
titled to be represented by Senators and Representatives in Congress, duly 
elected and qualified, upon their taking the oaths of office required by ex- 
isting laws." 



RE8T0EATI0K OF TEJ^J^ESSEE. 475 

On the following day, this joint resolution was the regular or- 
der, and gave rise to a brief discussion. 

Mr. BoutwcU desired to offer an amendment providing that 
Tennessee should have representation in Congress whenever, in 
addition to having ratified the constitutional amendment, it 
should establish an "equal and just system of suffrage." Mr. 
Boutwell, although opposed to the joint resolution before the 
House, had no " technical " objections to the immediate restora- 
tion of Tennessee. "I am not troubled," said he, "by the 
informalities apparent in the proceedings of the Tennessee Legis- 
lature upon the question of ratifying the constitutional amend- 
ment. It received the votes of a majority of the members of a 
full house, and when the proper officers shall have made the cus- 
tomary certificate, and filed it in the Department of State, it is 
not easy to see how any legal objection can be raised, even if two- 
thirds of the members were not present, although that proportion 
is a quorum according to the constitution of the State." 

Mr. Boutwell declared that his objections to the pending meas- 
ure were vital and fundamental. The government of Tennessee 
was not republican in form, since under its constitution more 
than eighty thousand male citizens Were deprived of the right 
of suffrage. The enfranchisement of the freedmen of Tennessee 
should be the beginning of the great work of reconstruction upon 
a republican basis. "We surrender the rights of four million 
people," said Mr. Boutwell in concluding his remarks ; " we sur- 
render the cause of justice; we imperil the peace and endanger 
. the prosperity of the country ; we degrade ourselves as a great 
party which has controlled the government in the most trying 
times in the history of the world." 

Mr. Higby thought that Tennessee should not be admitted 
without a restriction that she should not be allowed any more 
representation than that to which she would be entitled were the 
constitutional amendment in full operation and effect. 

Mr. Bingham advocated at considerable length the immediate 
restoration of Tennessee. " Inasmuch," said he, " as Tennessee 
has conformed to all our requirements ; inasmuch as she has, by 
a majority of her whole legislature in each house, ratified the 
amendment in good faith ; inasmuch as she has of her own vol- 
untary will conformed her constitution and laws to the Constitu- 
tion and laws of the United States ; inasmuch as she has by her 



470 THE TniRTY-J^IJ^TH COMGRESS. 

fimdanieutal law forever prohibited the assumption or payment 
of the rebel debt, or the enslavement of men ; inasmuch as she 
has by her own constitution declared that rebels shall not exer- 
ercise any of the political power of the State or vote at elections ; 
and thereby given the American people assurance of her deter- 
mination to stand by this great measure of security for the future 
of the Republic, Tennessee is as much entitled to be represented 
here as any State in the Union." 

Mr. Finck, INIr. Eldridge, and other Democrats favored the 
resolution, while they protested against and "spit on" the pre- 
amble. 

The question having been taken, the joint resolution passed the 
House, one hundred and twenty-five voting in the affirmative, 
and twelve in the negative. These last were the following : 
Messrs. Alley, Benjamin, Boutwell, Eliot, Higby, Jenckes, Julian, 
Kelley, Loan, McClurg, Paine, and Williams. 

The announcement of the passage of the joint resolution was 
greeted, with demonstrations of applause on the floor and in the 
galleries. 

On the day succeeding this action in the House, the joint reso- 
lution came up for consideration in the Senate. After a consider- 
able discussion, the resolution as it passed the House was adopted 
by the Senate. 

In place of the preamble which was passed by the House, Mr. 
Trumbull proposed the following substitute: 

^'■Whereas, In the year 1861, the government of the State of Tennessee was 
seized upon and taken possession of by persons in hostility to the United 
States, and the inhabitants of said State, in pursuance of an act of Congress 
were declared to be in a state of insurrection against the United States ; and 
whereas said State government can only be restored to its former political 
relations in the Union by the consent of the law-making power of the United 
States ; and whereas the people of said State did on the 22d of February, 
1865, by a large popular vote adopt and ratify a constitution of government 
whereby slavery was abolished, and ail ordinances and laws of secession 
and debts contracted under the same were declared void; and whereas a 
State government has been organized under said constitution which has 
ratified the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing 
slavery, also the amendment proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and has 
done other acts proclaiming and denoting loyalty: Therefore." 

Mr, Sherman opposed the substitution of this preamble. " These 
political dogmas," said he, " can not receive the sanction of the 



BESTOEATIOK OF TEKKESSEE. 477 

• President; and to insert tliera will only create delay, and post- 
pone the admission of Tennessee." 

" I pay no regard," said ~Mv. AYade, " to all tliat has been said 
here in relation to the President probably vetoing your bill, for 
any thing he may do, in my judgment, is entirely out of order on 
this floor. Sir, in olden times it was totally inadmissible in the 
British Parliament for any member to allude to any opinion that 
the king might entertain on any thing before the body ; and much 
more, sir, ought an American Congress never to permit any mem- 
ber to allude to the opinion that the Executive may have upon 
any subject under consideration. He has his duty to perform, 
and we ours ; and we have no right whatever under the Consti- 
tution to be biased by any opinion that he may entertain on any 
subject. Therefore, sir, I believe that it is, or ought to be, out of 
order to allude to any such thing here. Let the President do 
what he conceives to be his duty, and let us do ours, without be- 
ing biased in any way whatever by what it may be supposed he 
will do." 

Mr. Brown entered his disclaimer. " Republicanism," said he, 
" means nothing if it means not impartial, universal suifrage. 
Republicanism is a mockery and a lie if it can assume to admin- 
ister this government in the name of freedom, and yet sanction, 
as this act will, the disfranchisement of a large, if not the largest, 
part of the loyal population of the rebel States on the pretext of 
color and race." 

The question being taken on the passage of the preamble as 
substituted by the Senate, together with the resolution of the 
House, resulted in twenty-eight Senators voting in the affirma- 
tive, and four in the negative. The latter were Messrs. Brown, 
Buckalew, McDougal, and Sumner. 

The House concurred in the amendment of the Senate, without 
discussion, and the joint resolution went. to the President for his 
approval. 

On the 24th of July, the President, not thinking it expedient 
1p risk a veto, signed the joint resolution, and at the same time 
sent to the House his protest against the opinions presented in 
the preamble. After having given his objections to the pre- 
amble and resolution at considerable length, the President said : 
"I have, notwithstanding the anomalous character of this pro- 
ceeding, affixed my signature to the resolution. [General ap- 



478 THE TEIRTY-JflJ^TH COJTGEESS. 

plausc and laughter.] My approval, however, is not to be 
construed as an acknowledgment of the right of Congress to pass 
laws ]3reliminary to the admission of duly-qualified representa- 
tives from any of the States. [Great laughter.] Neither is it 
to be considered as committing me to all the statements made in 
the preamble, [renewed laughter,] some of which are, in my 
opinion, without foundation in fact, especially the assertion that 
the State of Teunnessee has ratified the amendment to the Con- 
stitution of the United States proposed by the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress." [Laughter.] 

After the reading of the Pesident's Message, Mr. Stevens said : 
" Inasmuch as the joint resolution has become a law by the entire 
and cordial approval of the President, [laughter,] I am joint com- 
mittee on reconstruction to ask that that committee be discharged 
from the further consideration of the credentials of the members 
elect from the State of Tennessee, and to move that the same be 
referred to the Committee of Elections of this House." 

This motion was passed. At a later hour of the same day's 
session, Mr. Dawes, of the Committee on Elections, having per- 
mission to report, said that the credentials of the eight Eepre- 
sentatives elect from Tennessee had been examined, and were 
found in conformity with law. He moved, therefore, that the 
gentlemen be sworn in as members of the House from the State 
of Tennessee. 

Horace Maynard and other gentlemen from Tennessee then 
went forward amid applause, and took the oath of office. 

On the day following, Joseph S. Fowler was sworn in, and took 
his seat as a Senator from Tennessee. 

The next day Mr. Fowler presented the credentials of David 
T. Patterson as a Senator elect from Tennessee. A motion was 
made that these credentials be referred to the Committee on the 
Judiciary, with instructipns to inquire into the qualifications of 
INIr. Patterson. 

The circumstances in this case were peculiar. Mr. Patterson 
had been elected circuit judge by the people of East Tennessee ia 
1854. His term of office expired in 1862, after Tennessee had 
passed the ordinance of secession and became a member of the 
Southern Confederacy. He was a firm, avowed, and influential 
Union man, and in the exercise of the duties of his office did 
much to protect the interests of loyal men. Persons who were 



RESTORATIOJ{ OF TEJ^jYESSEE. 479 

opposed to secession, which with lawless violence was sweeping 
over the State, felt the importance of having the offices filled by 
Union men. Mr. Patterson was urged to again become a candi- 
date for judge. lie reluctantly consented, and was elected by a 
large majority over a rebel candidate. Governor Harris sent his 
commission, with peremptory orders that he should immediately 
take the oath to support the Southern Confederacy. Judge Pat- 
terson delayed and hesitated, and consulted other Union men as 
to the proper course to be pursued. They advised and urged him 
to take the oath. By so doing he could afford protection, to some 
extent, to Union men, against acts of lawless violence on the part 
of rebels. He was advised that, if he did not accept the office, 
it would be filled by a rebel, and the people would be oppressed 
by the civil as well as the military power of the rebels. He 
yielded to these arguments and this advice, and took the oath 
prescribed by the Legislature, which in substance was that he 
would support the Constitution of Tennessee and the Constitution 
of the Confederate States. He declared at the time that he owed 
no allegiance to the Confederate Government, and did not con- 
sider that part of the oath as binding him at all. 

Judge Patterson held a few terms of court in counties when he 
could organize grand juries of Union men, and did something 
toward preserving peace and order in the community. He aided 
the Union people and the Union cause in every possible way, and 
thus became amenable to the hostility of the secessionists, who 
subjected him to great difficulty and danger. He was several 
times arrested, and held for some time in custody. At times he 
was obliged to conceal himself for safety. He spent many nights 
in out-buildings and in the woods to avoid the vengeance of the 
rebels. 

In September, 1863, the United States forces under General 
Burnside having taken possession of Knoxville, Mr. Patterson 
succeeded, with his family, in making his escape to Knoxville, 
and did not return to his home until after the close of the re- 
bellion. 

The Committee on the Judiciary having taken into considera- 
tion the above and other palliating circumstances, proposed a 
resolution that Mr. Patterson " is duly qualified and .entitled to 
hold a seat in the Senate." On motion of ^Ir. Clark this reso- 
lution was amended to read, " that, upon taking the oaths re- 



Ji.SO THE THIBTY-JflJfTH CONGRESS. 

quired by the Constitution and the laws^ lie be admitted to a seat 
in the Senate." 

- It was, however, thought better by the Senate to pass a joint 
resohition that in the case of Mr. Patterson there should be 
omitted from the test oath the following w^ords : " That I have 
neither sought, nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the func- 
tions of any office whatever under any authority, or pretended 
authority, in hostility to the United States." This joint resolu- 
tion having passed the Senate, was immediately sent to the House 
of Representatives, then in session, and at once came up before 
that body for consideration. The resolution was eloquently advo- 
cated by Messrs. Maynard and Taylor, and opposed by Mr. Stokes, 
all of Tennessee. 

" On the night of the 22d of February last," said Mr. Stokes, 
" I delivered a speech in Nashville, and there and then declared, 
if admitted as a member of this House, I would freeze to my seat 
before I would vote to repeal the test oath. [Long-continued 
applause on the floor and in the galleries.] I have made the 
same declaration in many speeches since then. 

" Sir, I regard the test oath passed by the United States Con- 
gress as the salvation of the Union men of the South as well as 
of the North. I regard it as sacred as the flaming sword which 
the Creator placed in the tree of life to guard it, forbidding any 
one from partaking of the fruit thereof who was not pure in heart. 
Sir, this is no light question. Repeal the test oath and you per- 
mit men to come into Congress and take seats who have taken 
an oath to the Confederate Government, and ^\\o have aided and 
assisted in carrying out its administration and laws. That is what 
we are now asked to do. Look back to the 14th of August, 1861, 
the memorable day of the proclamation issued by Jefferson Davis, 
ordering every man within the lines of the confederacy who still 
held allegiance to the Federal Government to leave within forty- 
eight hours. That order compelled many to seek for hiding-places 
who could not take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate 
Government. When the rebel authorities said to our noble 
Governor of Tennessee, 'We will throw wide open the prison 
doors and let you out, if you will swear allegiance to our gov- 
ernment,' what was his reply ? ' You may sever my head from 
my body, but I will never take the oath to the Confederate 
Government.' " 




-'TK?S!S**- 



VCtfenjt.- ----* 




V-r. P.. STOKF.S 
lill'BESENTATlVE FROM TENNESSEE. 



BESTOBATIOJf OF TEJ^JTESSEE. 4SI 

Mr. Conkling said : " I should bo recreant to cai;idor were I to 
attempt to conceal my amazement at the scene wm passing before 
us. Only eight short days ago and eleven States were silent and 
absent here, because tbey had participated in guilty rebellion, and 
because they were not in fit condition to share in the government 
and control of this country. Seven short days ago we found one 
of these States with loyalty so far retrieved, one State so far void 
of present offenses, that the ban was withdrawn from her, and 
she again was placed on an equal footing with the most favored 
States in the Union. The doors were instantly thrown open to 
her Senators and Representatives, the Avhole case was disposed of, 
and the nation approved the act. Here the matter should have 
rested; here it should have been left forever undisturbed. But 
no; before one we'ek has made its round, we arc called upon to 
stultify ourselves, to wound the interests of the nation, to surren- 
der the position held by the loyal people of the country almost 
unanimously, and the exigency is that a particular citizen of Ten- 
nessee seeks to effect his entrance to the Senate of the United States 
without being quaHfied like every other man who is permitted to 
enter there. 

" We are asked to drive a ploughshare over the very foundation 
of our position ; to break down and destroy the bulwark by which 
we may secure the results of a great war and a great history, by 
which we may preserve from defilement this place, where alone 
in our organism the people never lose their supremacy, except by 
the recreancy of their Representatives; a bulwark without which 
we may not save our Government from disintegration and dis- 
grace. If we do this act, it will be a precedent which will caiTy 
fatality in its train. From Jefferson Davis to the meanest tool 
of despotism and treason, every rebel may come here, and we shall 
have no reason to assign against his admission, except the arbi- 
trary reason of numbers." 

Mr. Conkling closed by moving that the joint resolution be 
laid on the table, which was carried by a vote of eighty-eight to 
thirty-one. 

During the same day's session — which was protracted until 
seven o'clock of Saturday morning, July 28th — the same subject 
came up again in the Senate, on the passage of the resolution to 
admit Mr. Patterson to a seat in the Senate upon his taking the 
oaths required by tlie Constitution and laws. After some dis- 
31 



4S2 THE THIRTY-mJ^TH COMGBESS. 

cnssion, the resolution ijassed, twenty-one voting in the affirma- 
tive and eleveH in the negative. 

INIr. Patterson went forward to the desk, and the prescribed 
oaths having been administered, he took his seat in the Senate. 
Thus, on the last day of the first session of the Tliirty-ninth 
Congress, Tennessee was fully reconstructed in her representation. 



J^EGRO SUFFBdGE. 4SS 



CHAPTER XXI. 

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 

Review of thj; Pkecedixg Action — Efforts of Mr. Yates for Unrestricted 
Suffrage — Davis's Amendment to Cuvier — The "Propitious Hour" — 
The Mayor's Remonstrance — Mr. Willey's Ajiendment — Mr. Gowan's 
Amemdmext for Fejiale Suffrage — Attempt to Out-r.vdical the' Rad- 
icals — Opinions for and against Female Suffrage — Re^vding and Writ- 
ing AS a Qualification — Passage op the Bill — Objections op the Presi- 
dent — Two Senators on the Opinion's op the People — The Suffrage 
Bill becomes a Lavt. 

ON tlie reassembling of the Thirty-uintli Congress for the 
second session, December 3cl, 1866, immediately after the 
preliminaries of opening had transpired, Mr. Sumner called 
up business which had been introduced on the first day of the 
preceding session — a year before — which still remained unfin- 
ished — the subject of suffrage in the District of Columbia. In so 
doinsr, the Senator from Massachusetts said : " It will be remem- 
bered that it was introduced on the first day of the last session ; 
that it was the subject of repeated discussions in this chamber; 
that it was more than once referred to the Committee on the 
District of Columbia, by whose chairman it was reported back to 
the Senate. At several different stages of the discussion it was 
supposed that we were about to reach a final vote. The country 
expected that vote. It was not had. It ought to have been had. 
And now, sir, I think that the best way is for the Senate in this 
very first hour of its coming together to put that bill on its pas- 
sage. It has been thoroughly debated. Every Senator here has 
made up his mind on the question. There is nothing more to be 
said on either side. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly 
willins: that the vote shall be taken without one further word of 
discussion ; but I do think that the Senate ought not to allow the 



ASJi. THE THIRTY-JflJVTH COJfGRESS. 

bill to be postponed, We ought to seize this first occasion to 
put the bill on its passage. The country expects it ; the country 
will rejoice and be grateful if you will signalize this first day of 
your ^joining together by this beaurtful and generous act." 

Objection being raised to the immediate consideration of the 
subject, it was decided that it must be deferred under a rule of 
the Senate until after the expiration of six days fioni the com- 
mencement of the session. 

It is proper here to present a brief record of the proceedings 
upon the subject during the preceding session. The passage of a 
bill in the House of Representatives, and the discussion upon the 
subject in that body are given in a preceding chapter. This bill, 
as ]Mr. INIorrill subsequently said in the Senate, was not an elec- 
tion bill, and conferred no . right of voting upon any person be- 
yond what he had before. It was a mere declaration of a right 
to vote. As such, the bill was favorably received by the Senate 
Committee to whom it was referred, and was by them reported 
back with favor, but was never put upon its passage. 

jNIeanwhile the Senate Committee had under consideration a 
bill of their own, which they reported on the 10th of January. 
This bill provided for restricted suffrage, requiring the qualifica- 
tion to read and write. Mr. Yates, an original and uncom- 
promising advocate of universal suffrage was opposed to this 
restriction. He was a member of the Committee on the District 
of Columbia, but had been prevented from being present in ita 
deliberations when it was resolved to report the bill as then be- 
fore the Senate. Fearing that the bill might pass the Senate 
with the objectionable restrictions, Mr. Yates moved that it be 
recommitted, which was done. 

At a meeting of the committee called to reconsider the bill, Mr. 
Yates argued at length and with earnestness against disfranchise- 
ment on the ground of inability to read and write. The commit- 
tee reversed their former decision, and reported the bill substan- 
tially in the form in which it subsequently became a law. The 
bill being before the Senate on the 16th of January, 1866, Mr. 
Garrett Davis opposed it in a speech of great length. He made 
use of every argument and referred to every authority within his 
reach to prove the inferiority of the negro race. After gi^ng 
Cuvier's definition of the " negro," the Senator remarked : " The 
great naturalist might have added as other distinctive character- 



XEGKO SUFFRAGE. 4Sd 

istics of the negro; first, that his skin exhales perpetually a 
peculiar pungent and disagreeable odor ; second, that ' the hollow 
of his foot makes a hole in the ground.' " The Senator drew a 
fearful picture of the schemes of Massachusetts to use the negro 
voters, whom it was her policy to create in the South. 

This subject did not again come up in the Senate until after 
the lapse of several months. On the 27th of June it was " dis- 
entombed " from what many sup])osed was its final resting place. 
Mr. ]Morrill proposed as an amendment that the elective franchise 
should be restricted to persons who could read and write. This 
was rejected; fifteen voting in the affirmative, and nineteen in 
the negative. 

Mr. Willey opposed the bill before the Senate in a speech of 
considerable length. He advocated the bestowal of a qualified 
and restricted suifrage upon the colored people of the District. 
His chief objection to the measure before the Senate was that it 
was untimely. " Any thing not essential in itself," said he, '*or 
very material to the welfare of the nation, or a considerable part 
of the nation, if it is calculated to complicate our difficulties, or 
inflame party passions or sectional animosities, had better be left, 
it appears to me, to a more propitious hour." 

The " propitious hour " hoped for by the Senator, did not come 
around until after the opening of the second session. The subject 
did not again seriously occupy the attention of the Senate, with 
the exception of ]Mr. Sumner's effi)rt to have it taken up on the 
first day of the session, until the 10th day of December, 1866. 

On that day, Mr. Morrill, who, as Chairman of the Committee on 
the District of Columbia, had the bill in charge, introduced the 
subject with a speech of considerable length. " This measure," 
said he, " not only regulates the elective franchise in this District, 
but it extends and enlarges it. The principal feature of the bill 
is that it embraces the colored citizens of the District of Columbia. 
In this particular it is novel, and in this particular it is im- 
portant. In this particular it may be said to be inaugurating a 
policy not only strictly for the District of Columbia, but in some 
sense for the country at large. In this respect it is, I suppose, 
that this bill has received so large a share of the public attention 
during the last session and the recess of the Congress of the 
United States." 

Mr. Morrill called attention to the remonstrance of the Mavor 



4S6 THE THIBTY-MIJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

of "SVasluno'ton, who had informed the Senate that in an election 
hehl for the purpose of ascertaining the sentiments of the voters 
of the city upon the subject, some six thousand five hundred were 
opposed to the extension of the elective franchise, while only 
thirty or forty were in favol- of it. 

" These six or seven thousand voters/' said Mr. Morrill, " are 
only one in thirty at most of the people of this District, and it 
is very difficult to understand how there could be more signifi- 
cance or probative force attached to these six or seven thousand 
votes than to an equal number of voices independent of the ballot, 
under the circumstances. This is a matter aifecting the capital 
of the nation, one in which the American people have an inter- 
est, as indirectly, at least, touching the country at large. What 
the National Congress pronounce here as a matter of right or 
expediency, or both, touching a question of popular rights, may 
have an influence elsewhere for good or for evil. We can not 
wdl justify the denial of the right of suifrage to colored citizens 
on the protest of the voters of the corporation of Washington. 
We may not think fit to grant it- simply on the prayer of the 
petitioners. Our action should rest on some recognized general 
principle, which, applied to the capital of the nation, would be 
equally just applied to any of the political communities of which 
the nation is composed." 

In closing his speech, Mr. Morrill remarked : " In a iiation of 
professed freemen, whose political axioms are those of universal 
liberty and human rights, no public tranquillity is possible while 
these rights are denied to portions of the American people. We 
have taken into the bosom of the Republic the diverse elements 
of the nationalities of Europe, and are attempting to mold them 
into national harmony and unity, and are still inviting other mil- 
lions to come to us. Let us not despair that the same mighty 
energies and regenerating forces will be able to assign a docile and 
not untractable race its appropriate place in our system." 

Mr. Willey's amendment, proposed when the subject was last 
considered in the previous session, six months before, being now 
the pending question, its author addressed the Senate in favor of 
some restriction* upon the exercise of the elective franchise. 
"There ought to be some obligation," said he, "either in our 
fundamental laws in the States, or' somewhere, by some means 
requh-iug the peonle to educate themselves; and if this can be 



JfEGRO SUFFRAGE. 487 

accomplished by disqualifying those who arc not educated for the 
exercise of the right of suffrage, tlius stimulating them to acquire 
a reasonable degree of education, that of itself, it seems to mc, 
would be a public blessing." 

" I am against this qualification of reading and writing," said 
Mr. Wilson ; " I never did believe in it. I do not believe in it 
now. I voted against it in my own State, and I intend to vote 
asainst it here. There was a time when I would have taken it, 
because I did not know that we could get any thing more ni this 
contest; but I think the great victory of manhood suffrage is 
about achieved in this country." 

" Reading and writing, as a qualification for voting," said Mr. 
Pomeroy, " might be entertained in a State where all the people 
were allowed to go to school and learn to read and write ; but it 
seems to me monstrous to apply it to a class of persons in this 
community who were legislated away from school, to whom every 
avenue of learning was shut up by law." 

Some discussion was elicited by a proposition made by Mr. 
Anthony to attach to Mr. AVilley's amendment a provision ex- 
cluding from the right to vote all " who in any way voluntarily 
gave aid and comfort to the rebels during the late rebellion." 

This was opposed by Mr. Wilson. " We better not meddle with 
that matter of disfranchisement," said he. " There are but few 
of these persons here, so the prohibition will practically not amount 
to any thing. As we are to accomplish a great object, to establish 
universal suffrage, we should let alone all propositions excluding 
a few men here. Disfranchisement will create more feeling and 
more bitterness than enfranchisement." 

Mr. Willey's amendment was finally so much " amended " that he 
could not support it himself, and it received but one affirmative 
vote, that of Mr. Kirkwood. 

Mr. Cowan proposed to amend the bill by striking out the 
word "male" before the v/ord "person," that females might 
enjoy the elective franchise. " I propose to extend this privilege,'^' 
said he, " not only to males, but to females as well ; and I should 
like to hear even the most astute and learned Senator upon this 
floor give any better reason for the exclusion of females from the 
right of suffrage than there is for the exclusion of negroes. 

"If you want to widen the franchise so as to purify your 
ballot-box, throw the virtue of the country into it; throw the 



488 THE THIRTY- Jfi:NTH COJ^GRESS 

temperance of the country into it ; throw the purity of the country 
into it ; throw the angel element — if I may so express myself— 
into it. [Laughter.] Let there be as little diabolism as possible, 
but as much of the divinity as you can get." 

The discussion being resumed on the following day, Mr. An- 
thony advocated Mr. Cowan's amendment. " I suppose/' said he, 
" ^hat the Senator from Pennsylvania introduced this amendment 
rather as a satire upon the bill itself, or if he had any serious in- 
tention, it was only a mischievous one to injure the bill. But it 
will not probably have that effect, for I suppose nobody will vote 
for it except the Senator himself, who can hardly avoid it, and I, 
who shall vote for it because it accords with a conclusion to which 
I have been brought by considerable study upon the subject of 
suffrage." 

After having answered objections against female suffrage, Mr. 
Anthony remarked in conclusion : " I should not have introduced 
this question ; but as it has been introduced, and I intend to vote 
for the amendment, I desire to declare here that I shall vote for 
it in all seriousness, because I think it is right. The discussion 
of this subject is not confined to visionary enthusiasts. It is now 
attracting the attention of some of the best thinkers in the world, 
both in this country and in Europe; and one of the very best of 
them all, John Stuart Mill, in a most elaborate and able paper, 
has declared his conviction of the right and justice of female suf- 
frage. The time has not come for it, but the time is coming. It 
is coming with the progress of civilization and the general ame- 
lioration of the race, and the triumph of truth, and justice, and 
equal rights." 

Mr. Williams opposed the pending amendment. " To extend 
the right of suffrage to the negroes in this country," said he, " I 
think is necessary for their protection; but to extend the right 
'of suffrage to women, in my judgment, is not necessary for their 
protection. Wide as the poles apai-t are the conditions of these 
t^vo classes of persons. The sons defend and protect the reputa- 
tion and rights of their mothers ; husbands defend and protect 
the reputation and rights of their wives ; brothers defend and 
protect the reputation and rights of their sisters ; and to honor, 
cherish, and love the women of this country is the pride and the 
glory of its sons. 

" When the women of this country come to be sailors and sol- 



J^EGBO SUFFRAGE. 4S9 

dicrs; when they come to navigate the ocean and to follow the 
plow ; when they love to be jostled and crowded by all sorts' of 
men in the thoroughfares of ti-ade and business; when they love 
the treachery and the turmoil of polities ; when they love the dis- 
soluteness of the camp, and the smoke of the thunder, and the 
blood of battle better than they love the affections and enjoyments 
of home and family, then it ^vill be time to talk a})out making 
the women voters ; but until that time, the question is not fairly 
before the country." 

Mr. Cowan defended his amendment and his position. "When 
the time comes," said he, " I am a Radical, too, along with my 
fellow Senators here. By what warrant do they suppose that I 
am not interested in the progress of the race ? If the thing is to 
be bettered, I want to better it." 

]Mr. INIorrill replied to the speech of Mr. Cowan. " Does any sup- 
pose," said ISIr. INIorrill, " that he is at all in earnest or sincere in 
a single sentiment he has uttered on this subject? I do not im- 
agine he believes that any one here is idle enough for a moment 
to suppose so. If it is true, as he intimates, that he is desirous 
of becoming a Radical, I am not clear that I should not be willing 
to accept his service, although there is a good deal to be repented 
of before he can be taken into full confidence. [Laughter.] 

"When a man has seen the error of his ways and confesses it, 
what more is thei'e to be done except to receive him seventy and 
seven times? Now, if this is an indication that the honorable 
Senator means to out-radical the Radicals, ' Come on, Macduff,' 
nobody will object, provided you can show us you are sincere. 
• That is the point. If it is mischief you are at, you will have a 
hard time to get ahead. While we are radical we mean to be 
rational. AVhile we intend to give every male citizen of the 
United States the rights common to all, we do not intend to be 
forced by our enemies into a position so ridiculous and absurd as 
to be broken down utterly on that question, and who ever comes 
here in the guise of a Radical and undertakes to practice that 
probably will not make much by the motion. I am not sur- 
prised that those of our friends who went out from us and have 
been feeding on the husks desire to get in ahead; but I am sur- 
prised at the indiscretion and the want of common sense exercised 
in making so profound a plunge at once ! If these gentlemen 
desire to be taken into companionship and restored to good stand- 



4dO TEE THIBTY-JflJriH COJ^GRESS. 

ino- I am the first man to reach out the hand and say, ' Welcome 
back at'-ain, so that you are repentant and regenerated;' but, sir, 
I am the last man to allow that you shall indorse what you call 
Eadicalism for the purpose of breaking down measures which we 
propose ! " . 

" He alleges," replied Mr. Cowan, " that I am not serious in 
the amendment I have moved ; that I am not in earnest about it. 
How does he know ? By what warrant does he undertake to say 
that a brother Senator here is not serious, not in earnest? I 
should like to know by what warrant he undertakes to do that. 
He says I do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained 
in the same vinegar and persimmon school, [laughter;] I have 
not been doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twang Avhich 
may characterize the gentleman, and which may be considered to 
be the evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally speak 
as a man, and as a good-natured man, I think, I hope I enter- 
tain no malice toward any body. But the honorable Senator 
thinks that I want to become a Radical. Why, sir, common 
charity ought to have taught the honorable Senator better than 
that. I think no such imputation, even on the part of the most 
virulent opponent that I have, can with any justice be laid to 
my door. I have never yielded to his radicalism ; I have never 
truckled to it. Whether it be right or wrong, I have never 
bowed the knee to it. From the very word 'go' I have been a 
Conservative ; I have endfeavored to save all in our institutions 
that I thought worth saving." 

Mr. Wade had introduced^ the original bill, and had put it 
upon the most liberal principle of franchise. " The question of , 
female suffrage," said he, " had not then been much agitated, and 
I knew the community had not thought sufficiently upon it to 
be ready to introduce it as an element in our political system. 
While I am aware of that fact, I think it will puzzle any. gentle- 
man to draw a line of demarcation between the right of the male 
and the female on this subject. Both are liable to all the laws 
you pass ; their property, their persons, and their lives are affected 
by the laws. Why, then, should not the females have a right to 
participate in their construction as well as the male part of the 
community? There is no argument that I can conceive or that 
I have yet heard that makes any discrimination between the two 
on the question of right. 



J^EGRO SUFFRAGE. 491 

" I shall give a vote on this ameiulnicnt that ^vill be deemed 
an unpopular vote, but I am not frightened by that. I have 
been accustomed to give such votes all my life almost, but I be- 
lieve they have been given in the cause of human liberty and 
right and in the way of the advancing intelligence of our age ; 
and whenever the landmark has been set up the community have 
marched up to it. I think I am advocating now the same kind 
of a principle, and I have no doubt that sooner or later it will 
become a fixed fact, and the comnninity will think it just as ab- 
surd to exclude females from the ballot-box as males." 

Mr. Yates opposed the pending amendment, deeming it a mere 
attempt on the part of the Senator from Pennsylvania to embar- 
rass this question. " Logically," said he, " there are no reasons 
in my mind which would not permit women to vote as well as 
men, according to the theory of our government. Bat that ques- 
tion, as to whether ladies shall vote or not, is not at issue now. 
I confess that I am for universal suffrage, and when the time 
comes, I am for suffrage by females as well as males." 

" While I will vote now," said Mr. Wilson, " or at any time, 
for woman suffrage as a distinct, separate measure, I am unal- 
terably opposed to connecting that question with the pending 
question of negro suffrage. The question of negro suffrage is 
now an imperative necessity ; a necessity that the negro should 
possess it for his own protection ; a necessity that he should pos- 
sess it that the nation may preserve its power, its strength, and 
its unity." 

" Why was the consideration of this measure discontinued at 
the last session, and the bill not allowed to pass the Senate?" 
asked Mr. Hendricks. 

"The bill passed the House of Representatives early in the 
session," replied Mr. Wilson. "It came to the Senate early in 
December. That Senator, I think, knows very well that we had 
not the power to pass it for the first five or six months of the 
session ; that is, Ave had not the power to make it a law. We 
could not have carried it against the opposition of the President 
of the United States, and we had assurances of gentlemen who 
were in intimate relations with him that his signature would not 
be obtained. It would not have been wise for us to pass the bill 
if it was to encounter a veto, unless we were able to pass it over 
that veto. The wise course was to bide our time until we had 



492 THE THIRTY-J^IjYTH COJfGRESS. 

"that powci'; and that power came before the close of the session, 
but it came in the time of great pressure, when other questions 
were crowding upon ns, and it w^as thought best by those -who 
were advocating it, especially as the chairman of the committee, 
the Senator from Maine, [Mr. Morrill,] was out of the Senate 
for many days on account of illness, to let the bill go over until 
this December." 

Mr. Johnson opposed the pending amendment. " I think if it 
was submitted to the ladies," said he — " I mean the ladies in the 
true acceptation of the term — of the United States, the privilege 
w^ould not only not be asked for, but would be rejected. I do 
not think the ladies of the United States would agree to enter 
into a canvass and undergo what is often the degradation of seek- 
ing to vote, particularly in the cities, getting up to the polls, 
crowded out and crowded in. I rather think they would feel it, 
instead of a privilege, a dishonor." 

]\Ir. Johnson was nnwilling to vote for the amendment with a 
view to defeat the bill. " I have lived to be too old," said he, 
''and have become too well satisfied of what I think is my duty 
to the country to give any vote which I do not believe, if it 
should be supported by the votes of a sufficient number to carry 
the measure into operation, would redound to the interests and 
safety and honor of the country." 

" The women of America," said Mr. Frelinghuysen, " vote by 
fliithful and true representatives, their husbands, their brothers, 
their sons; and no true man will go to the polls and deposit his 
ballot without remembering the true and loving constituency 
that he has at home. More than that, sir, ninety-nine out of 
a hundred, I believe nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a 
thousand, of the women in America do not want the privilege 
of voting in any other manner than that which I have stated. 
In both these regards there is a vast difference between the situa- 
tion of the colored citizens and the women of America. 

"The learned and eloquent Senator from Pennsylvania said 
yesterday with great beauty that he wanted to cast the angel 
element into the suffrage system of America. Sir, it seems to 
me, that it would be ruthlessly tearing the angel element from 
the homes of America ; and the homes of the people of America 
are infinitely more valuable than any suffrage system. It will be 



J^EGRO SUFFRAGE. 4OS 

a sorry day for this country when those vestal fires of piety and 
love are put out." 

On the next day, December 12th, the discussion being resumed, 
ISIr. Brown advocated the amendment. " I stand," said he, " for 
universal suffrage, and as a matter of fundamental principle do 
not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of 
race, color, or sex. I will go further and say that I recognize 
the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right ; and 
I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limita- 
tion upon it that does not spring out of the necessities of the 
social state itself." 

Believing "that the metaphysical always controls the practical 
in all the aiiairs of life," Mr. Brown gave the " abstract grounds " 
upon which he deemed the right of woman to the elective fran- 
chise rested. Coming finally to the more practical bearings of 
the subject, he answered the objection, that " if women are en- 
titled to the rights of franchise, they would correspondingly come 
under the obligation to bear arms." "Are there not large 
classes," he asked, "even among men in this country, who are 
exempt from service in our armies for physical incapacity and for 
other reasons? And if exemptions which appertain to males 
may be recognized as valid, why not similar exemptions for like 
reasons when applied to females? Does it not prove that there 
is nothing in the argument so far as it involves the question of 
right ? There are Quakers and other religious sects ; there are 
ministers of the Gospel; persons having conscientious scruples; 
indeed, all men over a certain age who under the laws of many 
of the States are released from service of that character. Indeed, 
it is the boast of this republic that ours is a volunteer military 
establishment. Hence I say there is nothing in the position that 
because she may not be physically qualified for service in your 
army, therefore you have the right to deny her the franchise on 
the score of sex." 

In closing an extended speech, Mr. Brown remarked : " Even 
though I recognize the impolicy of coupling these two measures 
in this manner and at this time, I shall yet record my vote in the 
affirmative as an earnest indication of my belief in the principle, 
and my faith in the future." 

INIr. Davis made another protracted speech against both the 
amendment and the original bill. "The great God," said he, 



JiOJl. THE THIRTY-J^IMTH C0:KGRESS. 

'■' who created all the races, and in every race gave to maa woman, 
never intended that woman should take part in national govern- 
ment among any people, or that the negro, the lowest, should 
ever have coordinate and equal power with the highest, the white 
race, in any government, national or domestic." 

In conclusion, Mr. Davis advised the late rebels to " resist this 
great, this most foul, cruel, and dishonoring enslavement. Men 
of the South, exhaust every peaceful means of redress, and when 
your oppressions become unendurable, and it is demonstrated that 
there is no other hope, then strike for your liberty, and strike as 
did your fathers in 1776, and as did the Hollanders and Zea- 
landers, led by William the Silent, to break their chains, forged 
by the tyrants of Spain." 

" When it is necessary," said Mr. Sprague, " that woman shall 
vote for the support of liberty and equality, I shall be ready to 
cast my vote in their favor. The black man's vote is necessary 
to this at this time. Do not prostrate all the industrial interests 
of the North by a policy of conciliation and of inaction. Delays 
are dangerous, criminal. When you shall have established, firmly 
and fearlessly, governments at the South friendly to the republic ; 
when you shall have ceased from receiving terms and propositions 
from the leaders of the rebellion as to their reconstruction ; when 
you shall have promptly acted in the interest of liberty, prosper- 
ity will light upon the industries of your people, and panics, com- 
mercial and mercantile revolutions, will be placed afar, off; and 
never, sir, until that time shall have arrived. And as an humble 
advocate of all industrial interests of the free people of the North, 
white and black, and as an humble representative of these inter- 
ests, I urge prompt action to-day, to-morrow, and every day until 
the work has been completed. Let no obstacle stand in the way 
now, no matter what it may be. You will save your people from 
poverty and free principles from a more desperate combat than 
they have yet witnessed. Ridicule may be used in this chamber, 
calumny may prevail through the country, and murder may be a 
common occurrence South to those who stand firmly thus and 
who advocate such measures. Let it be so; for greater will be 
the crowning glory of those who are not found wanting in the 
day of victory. Let us, then, press to the vote ; one glorious 
step taken, then we may take others in the same direction." 

" The objection," said Mr. Buckalew, " which I have to a large 



MEGRO SUFFRAGE. 495 

extension of suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State 
power, is this : that thereby you will corrupt and degrade elec- 
tions, and probably load to their complete abrogation hereafter. 
By pouring into the ballot-boxes of the country a large mass of 
ignorant votes, and votes subjected to pecuniary or social in- 
fluence, you will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the 
foundation for their ultimate destruction." 

"Afler giving some considerable reflection to the subject of 
suffrage," said Mr. Doolittle, " I have arrived at the conclusion 
that the true base or foundation upon which to rest suffrage in 
any republican community is upon the family, the head of the 
family ; because in civilized society the family is the unit, not the 
individual." 

]Mr. Pomeroy was in favor of the bill without the proposed 
amendment. " I do not want to weigh it down," said he, "" with 
any thing else. There are other measures that I would he glad 
to support in their proper place and time; but this is a great 
measure of itself. Since I have been a member of the Senate, 
there was a law in this District authorizing the selling of these 
people. To have traveled in six years from the auction-block to 
the ballot with these peoj^le is an immense stride, and if we can 
'arry this measure alone, of itself, we should be contented for the 
present." 

The vote being taken on Mr. Cowan's amendment conferring 
the elective franchise upon women, the result was yeas, nine ; nays, 
thirty-seven. The following are the names of those who voted, 
in the affirmative : . . ' 

Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster, Nesmith, Patterson, 
Riddle, and Wade. 

Mr. Dixon then moved to amend the bill by adding a proviso : 

"That no person who has not heretofore voted in this District shall be 
permitted to vote unless he shall be able, at the time of offering to vote, to 
read and also write his own name." 

" I would deny to no man," said Mr. Dixon, " the right of 
voting solely on account of his color ; but I doubt the propriety 
of permitting any man to vote, whatever his race or color, who 
has not at least that proof of intelligence which the ability to 
read and write furnishes." 



496 THE TniRTY-XIKTR CONGRESS. 

" What is the test ? " asked Mr. Saulsbury. " A person who 
can read and write. Is it his narae^ or only read and MTite?" 

"His name/' said one. 

" Read and. write his name ! " continued ]\Ir. Saulsbury. " A 
wonderful amount of education to qualify a man for the discharge 
of the high office and trust of voting ! Great knowledge of the 
system of government under which we live does this impart to 
the voter ! " 

" If this were really an intelligence qualification/' said IMr. 
Cowan, " I do not know what I might say ; but of the fact that 
the ability of a man merely to write his own name and read it, 
is intelligence, I am not informed. To write a man's name is 
simply a mechanical operation. It may be taught to any body, 
even people of the most limited capacity, in twenty minutes ; and 
to read it afterward certainly would not be very difficult." 

" I understand the amendment to include," said Mr. Willey, 
" the qualification of reading generally, and also of writing his 
name; two tests, one the reading generally, and the other the 
wilting his own name." 

" "Where is its precision ? " asked Mr. Cowan ; " where is it to 
end, and who shall determine its limits ? I will put the case of 
a board belonging to the dominant party, and suppose they have 
the statute amended by my honorable friend from Connecticut 
before them, and a colored man comes forward and j)roposes to 
vote. They put to him the question, ' Can you write your name 
and read?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Well, let us see you try it.' He then 
writes his name and he reads it, and he is admitted if he is un- 
derstood to belong to that party. But suppose, as has recently 
happened, that this dark man should come to the conclusion to 
vote on the other side, and it were known that he meant to vote 
on the other side, what kind of a chance would he have? Then 
the man of the dominant party, who desires to carry the election, 
says, ' You shall not only write your name and read it, but you 
must read generally. I have read the senatorial debates upon 
this question, and the honorable Senator -from West Virginia, 
who originated this amendment, was of opinion that a man should 
read generally. Now, sir, read generally, if you please.' ' Well,' 
says he, ' what shall I read ? ' Read a section of the Novuvi Or- 
ganum, or some other most difficult and abstruse thing, or a few 
sections from Okie's Physiology." 



J^EGRO SUFFRAGE. 497 

On the 13tli of December, the last clay of the discussion, Mr. 
Anthony occupied the chair during a portion of the session, and 
Mr. Foster took the floor in favor of the amendment proposed by 
his colleague. " The honorable Senator from I'ennsylvania," said 
he, " from the manner in Avhioh he treats this subject, I should 
think, Avas now fresh from his reading of 'Much A-do about 
Nothing,' and was quoting Mr. Justice Dogberry, who said, ' To 
be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to read and 
write comes by nature.' The Senator from Pennsylvania and 
others seem inclined to say, ' Away with writing and reading till 
there is need of such vanity.' I believe that the idea of admit- 
ting men to the elective franchise who can neither read nor write 
is ffoino; backward and downward. 

" Who are the men who come forward to deposit their ballots 
in the ballot-boxes ? They are the people of this country, to whom 
all question^ must ultimately go for examination and correction. 
They correct the mistakes which' we make, and which Congress 
makes, and which the Supreme Court makes. The electors at the 
ballot-boxes are the grand court of errors for the country. Now, 
sir, these Senators propose to allow men who can not read and 
write to correct our mistakes, to become members of this high 
court of errors. 

" The honorable Senator from Massachusetts says he wants to 
put the ballot into the hands of the black man for his protection. 
If he can not read the ballot, what kind of protection is it to him ? 
A written or printed slip of paper is put into the hands of a man, 
black or white, and if he can not read it, w^hat is it to him? 
"What does he know about it ? What can he do with it ? How 
can he protect himself by it ? As well might the honorable Sen- 
ator from Massachusetts put in the hands of a child who knew 
nothing of firearms a loaded pistol, with which to protect himself 
against his enemies. The child would be much more likely to 
endanger himself and his friends by the pistol than to protect 
himself. A perfectly ignorant man who can not read his ballot 
is much mt)re likely to use it to his own detriment, and to the 
detriment of the country, than he is to use it for the benefit of 
either." 

" The argument in favor of making the right to vote universal," 
said jNIr. Frelinglmysen, in making a second sjDcech upon the ques- 
tion, " is that the ballot itself is a great education ; that by its 
32 



49 S THE THIBTY-MIJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

encouraging the citizen, by its inspiring him, it adds dignity to 
his cliaractcr, and makes him strive to acquire learning. Secondly, 
that if the voting depended on learning, no inducement is extended 
to communities unfavorable to the right of voting in the colored 
man to give him the opportunity to learn; they would rather 
embarrass him, to prevent his making the acquisition, unless they 
■were in favor of his voting ; while if voting is universal, com- 
munities, for their own security, for their own protection, will be 
driven to establish common schools, so that the voter shall become 
intelligent." 

Pursuing a similar line of thought, Mr. "Wilson said : " Allow 
the black men to vote without this qualification and they will 
demand education, the school-houses will rise, school-teachers will 
be employed, these people will attend the schools, and the cause 
of education will be carried forward in this District with more 
rapidity than at any other period in its history. Give the negro 
the right of suffrage, and before a year passes round, you will 
see these men, who voted that they should not have the right to 
vote, running after them, and inquiring after the health of their 
Avives and children. I do not think the Senator from Kentucky 
[Mr. Davis] will be examining their pelvis or shins, or making 
speeches about the formation of their lips, or the angle of their 
foreheads on the floor of the Senate. You will then see the De- 
mocracy, with the keen scent that always distinguishes that party, 
on the hunt after the votes of these black men, [laughter;] and 
if they treat them better than the Republicans do, they will 
probably get their votes, and I hope they will. 

" And it will be just so down in these rebel States. Give the 
negroes of Virginia the right to vote, and you will find Wise and 
Letcher and the whole tribe of the secessionists undertaking to 
prove that from the landing at Jamestown in 1620 the first fam- 
ilies of the Old Dominion have always been the champions and 
the special friends of the negroes of Old Virginia, and that there 
is a great deal of kindred between them, [laughter ;] that they 
are relations, brethren ; that the same red blood courses in the 
veins of many of them. They will establishi all these things, per- 
haps by affidavits. [Laughter.] And I say to you, sir, they will 
have a good opportunity to get a good many of their votes, for in 
these respects they have the advantage of us poor Republicans." 

Of the pending amendment, Mr. Hendricks said : " I j)ropose 



J^EGRO SUFFRAGE. 499 

to vote for it, not because I am in favor, as a general j^ropo- 
sition, of an intelligence qualification for the right to vote, but 
because in this particular instance, I think it to be proper to 
prescribe it." 

"I shall vote," said Mr, Lane, "to enfranchise the colored 
residents of this District because I believe it is right, just, and 
proper; because I believe it is in accordance with those two grand 
central truths around which cluster every hope for redeemed hu- 
manity, the common fatherhood of God above us and the brother- 
hood of universal mankind." 

" The bill for Impartial Suffrage in the District of Columbia," 
said Mr. Sumner, " concerns directly some twenty thousand col- 
ored persons, Avhom it will lift to the adamantine platform of 
equal rights. If it were regarded simply in its bearings on the 
District it would be difficult to exaggerate its value ; but when it 
is regarded as an example to the whole country under the sanc- 
tion of Congress, its value is infinite. It is in the latter character 
that it becomes a pillar of fire to illumine the footsteps of millions. 
What we do here will be done in the disorganized States. There- 
fore, we must be careful that what we do here is best for the dis- 
organized States. 

" When I am asked to open the suffrage to women, or when I 
am asked to establish an educational standard, I can not on the 
present bill simply because the controlling necessity under which 
we act will not allow it. By a singular Providence we are now 
constrained to this measure of enfranchisement for the sake of 
peace, security, and reconciliation, so that loyal persons, white or 
black, may be protected and that the Republic may live. Here 
in the District of Columbia we begin the real work of reconstruc- 
tion by which the Union will be consolidated forever." 

The question was taken upon Mr. Dixon's amendment, w^hich 
was lost; eleven voting for, and thirty-four against the proposi- 
tion. The vote was then taken upon the bill to regulate the 
elective franchise in the District of Columbia. It passed the 
Senate, thirty-two voting in the affirmative, and thirteen in the 
negative. 

On the following day, December 14th, the bill came before the 
House of Representatives and passed without discussion; one 
hundred and eighteen voting in the affirmative, and forty-six in 
the nesjative. 



600 THE THIRTY-iKIJ^TR COKGRESS. 

On tlie 7tli of January, the President returned the bill to the 
Senate -with his objections. The Veto Message was immediately 
read by the Secretary of the Senate. 

The President's first objection to the bill was that it was not 
in accordance with the wishes of the people to whom it was to 
ajiply, they having "solemnly and with such unanimity" pro- 
tested against it. 

It seemed to the President that Congress sustained a relation 
to the inhabitants of the District of Columbia analogous to that 
of a legislature to the people of a State, and " should have a like 
respect for the will and interests of its inhabitants." 

AYithout actually bringing the charge of unconstitutionality 
against this measure, the President declared "that Congress is 
bound to observe the letter and spirit of the Constitution, as well 
in the enactment of local laws for the Seat of Government, as in 
legislation common to the entire Union." 

The Civil Rights Bill having become a law, it was, in the 
opinion of the President, a sufficient protection for the negro. 
" It can not be urged," said he, " that the proposed extension of 
suffrage in the District of Columbia is necessary to enable persons 
of color to protect either their interests or their rights." 

The President argued that the negroes were unfitted for the 
exercise of the elective franchise, and " can not be expected cor- 
rectly to comprehend the duties and responsibilities which pertain 
to suffi-age. It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot- 
box a new class of voters not qualified for the exercise of the 
elective franchise, we weaken our system of government instead 
of adding to its strength and durability. It may be safely as- 
sumed that no political truth is better established than that such 
indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage 
must end at last in its destruction." 

The President occupied a considerable portion of his Message 
with a warning to the people against the dangers of the abuse of 
legislative power. He quoted from Judge Story that the legis- 
lative branch may absorb all the powers of the government. He 
quoted also the language of Mr. Jefferson that one hundred and 
seventy tyrants are more dangerous than one tyrant. 

The statements of the President in opposition to the bill were 
characterized by Mr. Sherman as " but a resume of the arguments 



KEGRO SUFFRAGE. 501 

already adduced in the Senate," hence but little effort was made 
by the friends of the measure to reply. 

Mr. Sherman, in noticing the President's .statements in regard 
to the danger of invasions by Congress of the just powers of the 
executive and judicial departments, said, "I do not think that 
there is any occasion for such a warning, because I am not aware 
that in this bill Congress has ever assumed any doubtful power. 
The power of Congress over this District is without limit, and, 
therefore, in prescribing who shall vote for mayor and city coun- 
cil of this city it cau not be claimed that we usurp power or exer- 
cise a doubtful power. 

" There can be but little danger from Congress ; for our acts 
are but the reflection of the will of the people. The recent acts 
of Congress at tlie last session, those acts upon which the Presi- 
dent and Congress separated, were submitted to the people, and 
they decided in favor of Congress. Unless, therefore, there is an 
inherent danger from a republican government, resting solely 
upon the will of the people, there is no occasion for the warning 
of the President. Unless the judgment of one man is better 
than the combined judgment of a great majority, he should have 
respected their decision, and not continue a controversy in which 
our common constituency have decided that he was wrong." 

The last speech, before taking the vote, was made by Mr. Doo- 
little. " Men speak," said he, " of universal negro suffrage as 
having been spoken in favor of in the late election. There is not 
a State in this Union, outside of New England, which would vote 
in favor of universal negro suffrage. When gentlemen tell me 
that the people of the whole North, by any thing that transpired 
in the late election, have decided in favor of universal, un- 
qualified negro suffrage, they assume that for which there is no 
foundation whatever." 

The question being taken whether the bill should pass over the 
President's veto, the Senate decided in the affirmative by a vote 
of twenty-nine yeas to ten nays. 

The next day, January 8th, the bill was passed over the veto 
by the House of Representatives, without debate, by a vote of 
one hundred and thirteen yeas to thirty-eight nays. The Speaker 
then declared' that notwithstanding the objections of the President 
of the United States, the act to regulate the elective franchise in 
the District of Columbia had become a law. 



602 THE TUIETT-MIJfTH COJfGBESS. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

TH-E MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION ACT, 

Proposition by Mr. Stevens — "Piratical Governments" not to be Recog- 
nized — The Military Feature Introduced — Mr. Schofield's Dog — The 
Only Hope of Mr. Hise — Conversation Concerning the Reconstruction 
CoiDiiTTEE — Censure op a Member — A Military Bill Reported — War 
Predicted — The "Blaine Amendment " — Bill Passes the House — In the 
Senate — Proposition to Ajiend — Mr. McDougall Desires Liberty of 
Speech — Mr. Doolittle Pleads for the Life op the Republic — Mr, 
Sherman's Amendment — Passage in the Senate — Discussion and Xon- 
concurrence in the House — The Senate Unyielding — Qualified Con- 
currence of the House — The Veto — "The Funeral of the Nation" — ■ 
The Act — Supplementary Legislation. 

SOOX after the passage of the bill extending the elective 
franchise in the District of Columbia, Congress was occu- 
pied in devising and discussing a practical and efficient 
measure for the reconstruction of the rebel States. The germ 
of the great " Act for the more efficient government of the rebel 
States" is to be found in the previous session of Congress in a 
proposition made by Mr. Stevens on the 28th of May " to enable 
the States lately in rebellion to regain their privileges in the 
Union." . 

The Constitutional Amendment had been eliminated in the 
Senate of features which Mr. Stevens regarded as of great im- 
portance. There was an indisposition on the part of the House 
to declaring by an act of Congress that the rebel States should 
be restored on the sole condition of their accepting and ratifying 
the Constitutional Amendment, The bill proposed by Mr, Stevens 
was designed by its author as a plan of restoration to take the 
place of the proposition which accompanied the Constitutional 
Amendment. This bill recognized the de facto State governments 
at the South as valid "for municipal purposes." It required 
the President to issue a proclamation within six months calling 



MILITAR r RECOJfSTR UCTIOK A CT. 5 03 

conventions to form legitimate State constitutions, which slioulJ 
be ratified by the people. All male citizens above twenty-one 
years of age should be voters, and should be eligible to mem- 
bership in these constitutional conventions. All persons who 
held office under the "government called the Confederate States 
of America," or swore allegiance thereto, were declared to have 
forfeited their citizenship, and were required to be naturalized 
as foreigners before being allowed to vote. All citizens should 
be placed upon an equal footing in the reorganized States. 

On the 28th of July, the last day of the session, Mr. Stevens 
brought this bill to the notice of the House, without demanding 
Jmy action upon it. He made a solemn and affecting appeal to 
the House, and insisted upon it as the great duty of Congress to 
give all loyal men, white and black, the means of self-protection. 
"In this, perhaps my final action," said he, "on this great ques- 
tion, upon careful review, I can see nothing in my political course, 
especially in regard to human freedom, which I could wish to have 
expurged or changed." 

On the 19th of December, 1866, a few days after the reassem- 
bling of Congress for the second session, Mr. Stevens called up 
his bill for the purpose of amending it and putting it in proper 
shape for the consideration of Congress after the hollidays. 

On the 3d of January, 1867, Mr. Stevens addressed the House 
in favor of his plan of reconstruction. " This bill," said he, " is 
designed to enable loyal men, so far as I could discriminate 
them in these States, to form governments which shall be in 
loyal hands, and may protect them from outrages." 

As an amendment to this bill, ]\Ir. Ashley, chairman of the 
Committee on Territories, offered a substitute which was in- 
tended to establish provisional governments in the rebel States. 

Mr. Pike brought in review before the House three modes 
of dealing with the rebel States which had been proposed for 
the consideration and decision of Congress. The first was the 
immediate admission of the States into a full participation in 
the Government, treating them as if they had never been in 
rebellion. The second was "the let-alone policy, which would 
merely refuse them representation until* they had adopted the 
constitutional amendments." The third mode was " the imme- 
diate action by Congress in superseding the governments of 
those States set up by the President in 1865, and establishing 



504 THE THIETY-rnKTB QOJs'GRESS. 

in their place governments founded upon loyalty and universal 
suffrage. The policy last mentioned was advocated by Mr. 
Pike. " It has got to be time for action," said he, " if we are 
to fulfill the reasonable expectations of the country during the 
life of this Congress." 

On the 7th of January ]\Ir. Stevens proposed to amend his 
bill by inserting a provision that no person should be disfran- 
chised as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection 
or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment 
that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at 
the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they 
were every day whipping negroes for trivial oifenses. He had 
heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every 
adult negro they knew of. 

On the 8th of January a speech was made by Mr. Broomall 
advocating the passage of the bill before, the House. " Can the 
negro in the South preserve his civil rights without political 
ones?" he asked. "Let the convention riot of New Orleans 
answer; let the terrible three days in Memphis answer. In the 
latter city three hundred negroes, who had periled their lives in 
the service of their country, and still wore its uniform, were 
compelled to look on while the officers of the law, elected by 
white men, set their dwellings in flames and fired upon their 
wives and children as they escaped from the doors and windows. 
Their churches and school-houses were burned because they were 
their churches and school-houses. Yet no arrest, no conviction, 
no punishment awaits the perpetrators of these deeds, who walk 
in open day and boast of their enormities, because, forsooth, this 
is a white man's Government." 

On the 16th of January the discussion was resumed. Mr. 
Paine first addressed the House. He opposed the second section 
of the bill, which recognized the de facto governments of the 
rebel States as valid for municipal purposes. " I am surprised," 
said he, " that the gentleman from Pennsylvania should be ready, 
voluntarily, to assume this burden of responsibility for the anar- 
chy of murder, robbery, and arson which reigns in these so-called 
de facto governments. He may be able to get this fearful burden 
upon his back; but if he does, I warn him of the danger that 
the sands of his life will all run out before he will be able to 
shake it off. He will have these piratical governments on his 



MILITARY RECONSTRVCTIOJ^ ACT. 505 

hands voluntarily recognized as valid for municipal purposes 
until duly altered. He will have gratuitously become a copart- 
ner in the guilt which hitherto has rested upon the souls of 
Andrew Johnson and his Northern and Southern satellites, but 
which thenceforth will rest on his soul also until he can contrive 
duly to alter these governments. And so it will happen that the 
great Union party to which he belongs, and to which I belong, 
will become implicated, for how long a time God only knows, 
in this unspeakable iniquity which daily and hourly cries to 
Heaven from every rood of rebel soil for vengeance on these 
monsters." 

Mr. Bino'ham moved to refer the two bills — that of Mr. 
Stevens and that of Mr. Ashley — to the Committee on Recon- 
struction. He opposed these bills as "a substantial denial of 
the right of the great people who saved this republic by ' arms 
to save it by fundamental law." He advocated the propriety 
of making the proposed Constitutional Amendment the basis of 
reconstruction. It had already received the ratification of the 
Legislatures representing not less than twelve millions of the 
people of this nation. The fact that all the rebel States which 
had considered the amendment in their Legislatures had rejected 
it did not invalidate this mode of reconstruction. "Those in- 
surrectionary States," said he, "have no power whatever as 
States of this Union, and can not lawfully restrain, for a single 
moment, that .great body of freemen who cover this continent 
from ocean to ocean, now organized States of the Union and 
represented here, in their fixed purpose and undoubted legal 
right to incorporate the^ amendment into the Constitution of the 
United States." 

Mr. Bingham maintained that Congress has the power, with- 
out restriction by the Executive or the Supreme Court, to " pro- 
pose amendments to the Constitutions, and to decide finally the 
question of the ratification thereof, as well as to legislate for the 
nation." " I look upon both these bills," said Mr. Bingham, 
"as .a manifest departure from the spirit and intent of our Con- 
stitutional Amendment. I look upon it as an attempt to take 
away from the people of the States lately in rebellion that pro- 
tection which you have attempted to secure to them by your 
Constitutional Amendment." 

Mr. Dawson, in a speech of an hour's duration, maintained 



oOG TEE TniRTY-Js''i:N'TH COJ^GBESS. 

the doctrine, which he announced as that which had given shape 
to presidential policy, '"'that the attempt at secession having been 
suppressed by the physical power of the Government, the States, 
whose authority was usurped by the parties to the movement, 
liave never, at any time, been out of the Union ; and that hav- 
ing once expressed their acquiescence in the result of the contest 
and renewed their allegiance to the Union, they are, at the same 
time, restored to all the rights and duties of the adhering States." 

On the other hand, the policy of Congress, in the opinion of 
Mr. Dawson, was "a shameless outrage upon justice and every 
conservative principle," — a '' usurpation of Federal powers and a 
violation of State rights." 

Mr. Mayuard gave expression to his opinions by asking the 
significant question, *' Whether the men who went into the re- 
bellion did not by connecting themselves with a foreign govern- 
ment, by every act of which they were capable, denude themselves 
of their citizenship — whether they are not to be held and taken 
by this Government now as men denuded of their citizenship, 
having no rights as citizens except such as the legislative power 
of this Government may choose to confer upon them? In other 
words, is not the question on our part one of enfranchisement, 
not of disfranchisement ? " 

On the 17th of January, ]\Ir. Baker addressed the House in 
favor of referring the pending bill to the Committee on Recon- 
struction. He was opposed to the use of the term "Govern- 
ment," without qualification or restriction, as applied to the lately 
revolted States. He opposed the second section, as causing the 
de faeto governments to become valid for municipal purposes 
long before the scheme of reconstruction contemplated by the bill 
is effectuated. " To recognize them in advance," said he, " would 
be to incur the danger of further embarrassing the whole subject 
by the illogical consequences of our own illogical procedure." 

At this stage Mr. Stevens arose and modified his substitute by 
withdrawing the second section, which contained the provision 
objected to by Mr. Baker as well as by his "ardent friend" .Mr. 
Paine. ' Mr. Baker objected to that feature of the bill which pro- 
vided that none should be deprived of the right to vote as a 
punishment for any crime save insurrection or treason. " The 
penitentiaries of these States," said he, " might disgorge their in- 
mates upon the polls under the operation of this bill." 



MILITARY BJSCOJ^STEUCTIOJV ACT. 507 

Mr. Grinnell was opposed to sending the question to the Com- 
mittee on Reconstruction. He did not think it the most modest 
proposition in the world for ISIr. Bingham to urge the reference 
to his committee of a great question which the House generally 
desired to consider. " Let us have no delay," said he, '' no re- 
commitment, rather the earliest action upon this bill, as the 
requirement of the people who have saved the country, what the 
suffering implore, what justice demands, and what I believe God 
will approve." 

" It is to my mind most clear," said ^Mr. Donnelly, in a speech 
upon the pending question, " that slavery having ceased to exist, 
the slaves became citizens ; being citizens they arc a part of the 
peojile, and being a part of the people no organization deserves 
a moment's consideration at our hands which attempts to ignore 
them." 

Of the Southern States as under rebel rule, Mr. Donnelly re- 
marked : " The whites are to make the laws, execute the laws, 
interpret the laws, and write the history of their own deeds ; but 
below them, under them, there is to be a vast population — a ma- 
jority of the whole people — seething and writhing in a condition 
of suffering, darkness, and wretchedness unparalleled in the 
world. And this is to be an American State ! This is to be a 
component part of the great, humane, Christian republic of the 
world." 

" It is hard," said Mr. Eldridge, in a speech against the bill, 
"sad to stand silently by and see the republic overthrown. It 
is indeed appalling to those accustomed from early childhood to 
revere and love the Constitution, to feel that it is in the keeping 
of those having the power and determination to destroy it. With 
the passage of this bill must die every hope and vestige of the 
government of the Constitution. It is indeed the final breaking 
up and dissolution of the union of the States by the usurpation 
and revolutionary act of Congress." 

"Your work of restoration," said Mr. Warner, 'Svill never 
commence until the Congress of the United States assumes to be 
one of the departments of the General Government. It will 
never commence until you have declared, in the language of the 
Supreme Court, that the Executive, as commander-in-chief of 
the army and navy, ' can not exercise a civil function.' " 

"In less than two brief years of office," said Mr. Warner, 



60S THE TEIRTY-KIMTH COJ^GRESS. 

speaking of the Presicleut, " he has exercised more questionable 
powers, assumed more doubtful constitutional functions, obliter- 
ated more constitutional barriers, and interposed more corrupt 
schemes to the expression of the popular sentiment or will .of the 
peojile than all other Executives since the existence of the Gov- 
ernment." 

Mr. Spalding feared that the bill, should it become a law, 
would be found defective in not affording any protection to that 
loyal class of the inhabitants of those communities upon whom 
the elective franchise was conferred. " These colored men," said 
he, "who are now recognized by the Government as possessing 
the rights of freemen, are to be in jeopardy of being shot down 
like so many dogs when they attempt to visit the polls." He 
then offered an amendment, which was accepted by Mr. Stevens, 
by which a section was added to the bill susjjending the writ of 
habeas corpus in the ten rebel States, and placing them under 
martial law until they should be admitted to rej)resentation in 
Congress under the provisions of the bill. In this section thus 
introduced may be seen the origin of that feature which, in an 
enlarged and extended form, gave character to the important 
measure ultimately adopted by Congress, Avhich is popularly 
known as the " Military Reconstruction Bill." 

The discussion w^as continued by Mr. Koontz. " It is a 
solemn, imperative duty," said he, "that this nation owes to its 
colored people to protect them against their own and the nation's 
foes. It would be a burning, lasting disgrace to the nation were it 
to hand them over to their enemies. I know of no way in which 
this protection can be better given than by extending to them 
the elective franchise. Place the ballot in the hands of the black 
man and you give him that which insures him respect as well as 
protection." 

Mr. Scofield maintained that the ratification of the Constitu- 
tional Amendment by three-fourths of the loyal States was all 
that was necessary. " Twenty-three of the twenty -six States 
elected Legislatures instructed to adopt it. Very soon these 
twenty-three States, having a population in 1860 of twenty-one 
million five hundred thousand, and not less than twenty-seven 
millions now, will send to a perfidious Secretary the official evi- 
dence of the people's will. Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky 
alone give a negative answer. Who, then, stands in the way? 



MILITARY RECOJ{STRUCTIOJ{ ACT. 500 

One old man who is cliargcd by law with the cliity of proclaim- 
ing the adoption of the amendment, but who has determined to 
incorporate into the Union the debris of the late Confederacy — 
he stands in the way." 

" The Secretary is clever in work of this kind. An English 
nobleman was at one time exhibiting his kennel to an American 
friend, and passing by many of his showiest bloods, they came 
upon one that seemed nearly used up. ' This,' said the nobleman, 
ils the most valuable animal in the pack, although he is old, 
lame, blind, and deaf 'How is that?' incpiired the visitor. 
The nobleman explained: 'His education was good, to begin 
with, and his w^onderful sense of smell is still unimpaired. W« 
only take him out to catch the scent, and put the puppies on the 
track, and then return him to the kennel.' Do not suppose that 
I intend any comparison between the Secretary ot State and that 
veteran hunter. Such a comparison would be neither dignified 
nor truthful, because the Englishman w^ent on to say, 'I have- 
owned that dog for thirteen years, and, hard as he looks, he never 
bit the hand that fed him nor barked on a false trail.' " 

The laughter and applause which followed, were checked by 
the Speaker's gavel, which Mr. Schofield mistook for a notice to. 
quit. " Has my time expired ? " asked he. " It has not," re- 
plied the Speaker. " The Chair called you to order," said Mr. 
Stevens, in his seat, " for doing injustice to the dog." 

]\Ir. AVard, who next addressed the House, presented a novel 
theory of the rebel w\ar. " The people of the South," said he, 
" did not make w^ar upon our republican form of government, nor 
seek to destroy it ; they only sought to make two republics out of 
one. They are now, and have been all the time, as much attached 
to our system of free republican government as those w^ho abuse 
them for disloyalty." 

Mr. Ward presented his view of the state of things which 
would result from the passage of the pending bill. " These negro 
judges," said he, "will sit and hold this election backed by the 
United States army. That is rather an elevated position for the 
new-made freedman; the habeas corpus suspended, martial law 
proclaimed, the army at the back of the negro conducting an elec- 
tion to reconstruct States." 

Mr. Plants addressed the House in favor of the pending bill. 
Of the reception given by the rebels to the proposed constitutional 



510 THE TIIIRTY-KmTR CONGRESS. 

ameudiuont, he said : " They have not only refused to accept the 
more than generous terms proposed, but have rejected them with 
contumely, and with the haughty and insulting bravado of as- 
sumed superiority demand that the nation shall submit to such 
terras as they shall dictate." 

Mr. Miller, Avhilc advocating the pending measure, favored its 
reference to the Committee on Reconstruction. He gave a de- 
tailed account of the Constitutional Amendment, and its progress 
toward ratification among the Legislatures. He showed that the 
progress of reconstruction was delayed through fault of the rebels 
themselves. " It is not the desire of the great Republican party ,'^ 
said he, " to retard the restoration of those ten States to full polit- 
ical rights, but on the contrary they are anxious for a speedy ad- 
justment, in order to secure adequate protection to all classes and 
conditions of men residing therein, and at the same time afford 
ample security to the United States Government against any 
future refractory course that might be pursued on the part of 
those States." 

On the 21st of January the discussion was resumed by Mr. 
Kerr in a speech against the bill. He quoted extensively from 
judicial decisions and opinions to show that the rebel States were 
still entitled to their original rights in the Union. " The undis- 
guised and most unrighteous purpose of all this kind of legisla- 
tion," said he, " is to usurp powers over those States that can find 
no warrant except in the fierce will of the dominant party in this 
Congress. It is alike at war with every principle of good and 
free government, and with the highest dictates of humanity and 
national fraternity." 

Mr. Higby was in favor of the pending bill, and opposed its 
reference to the Committee on Reconstruction. He preferred 
that it should be retained in the House, Avhere it could be 
changed, matured, and finally passed. He contended that the 
rebel States should not come into the Union under any milder con- 
ditions than those imposed upon Territories recently passed upon 
in Congress. " Impartial suffrage," said he, " is required of each 
of those Territories as a condition precedent to their becoming 
States; and shall South Carolina, upon this basis of reconstruc- 
tion, become a part of this Union upon different terms and 
principles entirely from those implied by the votes we have just 
given ? " 



MILITARY BECOJ^STEUCTIOJ^ ACT. 611 

Mr. Trimble denounced the pending legislation in violent 
terms. " By this act," said he, " you dissolve their connection 
with the Government of the United States, blot them out of ex- 
istence as freemen, and degrade them to the condition of negro 
commonwealths. We have this monstrous proposition: to de- 
clare martial law in ten States of this Union ; and in making 
this declaration, we, in my judgment, step upon the mangled 
ruins of the Constitution ; •for the Constitution plainly gives this 
power neither to the executive nor the legislative department of 
the Government." 

Mr. Dodge, although a Eepublican, and in favor of " protecting 
the best interests of the colored man," could not vote for either 
of the propositions before the House. " The result of the pas- 
sage of this bill," said he, " if it shall become operative, will be 
to disfranchise nearly the entire white population of the Southern 
States, and at the same time enfranchise the colored people and 
give them the virtual control in the proposed organization of the 
new State governments." 

Mr. Dodge was particularly opposed to the military feature 
proposed by Mr. Spalding. " This is not likely," said he, " in 
the nature of things, to bring about an early reorganization of 
the South. The commercial, the manufacturing, and the agricul- 
tural interests of this country, as they look at this matter, will 
see in it a continuance of taxation necessary to support this mili- 
tary array sent to these ten States." 

"This bill, if executed," said Mr. Hise, in the course of a 
speech against the measure, " will in effect establish corrupt and 
despotic local governments for all those States, and place in all 
the offices the most ignorant, degraded, and corrupt portion of 
their population, who would rule and ruin without honesty or 
skill the actual property-holders and native inhabitants, making 
insecure life, liberty, and property, and still holding those States 
in their Federal relations subject to the most rapacious, fierce, 
and unrelenting despotism that ever existed, that of a vindictive 
and hostile party majority of a Congress in which they have no 
voice or representation, and by which irresponsible majority they 
would be mercilessly oppressed for that very reason ; and this will 
be continued, I fear, until the country shall again be precipitated 
into civil war." 

Since the " beneficent conservative power " of the President was 



512 THE THIRTY-KIKTR COjYGRESS.- 

overcome by two-thirds of Congress, Mr. Hise could see safety fur 
the nation in but one direction. " Our only hope/' said he, " of 
the preservation of a free government is in the judicial department 
of the government, and in the decisions of the Supreme Court 
pronouncing your acts unconstitutional and void." 

Mr. llaymond preferred the Constitutional Amendment as the 
basis of reconstruction, and blamed the party in power for aban- 
doning that policy. " Last year," said he, " that man was untrue 
to his party obligations who did not stand by it; this year the 
man is declared to be faithless to his party who does." 

Having spoken at considerable length against the pending 
measure, Mr. llaymond said : " For these reasons, sir, reasons of 
■policy and of authority, I do not think we ought to pass this 
bill. I do not believe it would be at all effective in securing the 
objects at which we aim, or that it would conduce in the slight- 
est degree to promote peace and secure equal rights among the 
people upon whom it is to take effect. And I can not help be- 
lieving that it contains provisions directly at war with specific 
and peremptory prohibitions of the Constitution." 

INIr. Raymond defended the Secretary of State against the ac- 
cusations of Mr. Schofield. Mr. Seward was not "a perfidious 
old man," but one " venerable, not more for age than for the sig- 
nal services to his country and the cause of freedom every -where, 
by which his long and laborious life, devoted wholly, from early 
manhood, to the public service, has been made illustrious." The 
Secretary of State acted under law. If Congress expected him 
to act under the theory that three-fourths of the loyal States 
were sufftcient for the ratification of the Constitutional Amend- 
nient, they should pass a law to that eifect. 

" The man," said Mr. Shellabarger, " who is now the acting 
President of the United States, once said to me, in speaking of a 
bill like the one now before the House, that it was a measure to 
dissolve the Union. That proposition has been so often repeated 
by members upon the other side of this hall, that I have thought 
the House would probably pardon me if I should attempt to 
condense into a few sentences a suggestion or two in regard to 
that declaration, repeated so often and worn out so thoroughly 
as it is." 

Mr. Shellabarger maintained the right of governments to with- 
hold from those who discard all the obligations pertaining to their 



MILITAB r RECOJ^STB VCTIOK A CT. 513 

citizenship the powers and rights which come alone from perform- 
ing these obligations. "This identical principle," said he, "was 
asserted at the origin of your Government in the legislation of 
every one of the States of the Confederation; was repeated and 
reenacted by three, at least, of the first Congresses under the 
Constitution, and has been virtually reenacted by being kept in 
force by every subsequent Congress which ever met under the 
Constitution/' 

" I see such diversity of opinion on this side of the House," 
said Mr. Stevens, "upon any question of reconstruction, that, if 
I do not change my mind, I shall to-morrow relieve the House 
from any question upon the merits of this bill by moving to lay 
it on the table." 

On the 26th of January the discussion was renewed. Mr. 
Ross, considering the argument on the constitutionality of the 
measure exhausted, endeavored to show that the bill was "in 
clear conflict with the action of the party in power during the 
entire progress of the war, and in conflict with the clearly-ex- 
pressed opinions of the Executive of the nation, the Suj)reme 
Court, and the Congress of the United States." 

Mr. Ashley withdrew his amendment to Mr. Stevens' bill 
that the House might, in Committee of the Whole, have an 
opportunity to perfect the bill so as to send it to the Senate 
within two or three days. 

"I ask the gentleman," said Mr. Conkling, "to state his ob- 
jection to having a subject like this committed to a committee 
which has now no work upon its hands, and which has a right 
to report at any time." 

"The Committee on Reconstruction," replied Mr. Ashley, 
" have held no meetings during this entire session up to this 
hour. Several bills proposed by gentlemen have been referred 
to that committee during this session, upon which they have 
taken no action. If the committee ever gets together again — 
which I doubt, as it ' is a large committee, composed of both 
branches of Congress — I have but little hope of their being able 
to agree. The chairman of the committee on the part of the 
Senate, as is well known, is absorbed in his efforts to perfect the 
financial measures of the country, and I fear that if this bill 
goes to that committee it will go to its grave, and that it will 
not, during the life of the Thirty-ninth Congress, see the light. 
33 



514 THE TEIRTY'XINTH CO K GUESS. 

If I were opposed to these bills, I would vote to send them to 
that committee as sending them to their tomb." 

'^ There is no difficulty," responded Mr. Conkling, " in having 
prompt consideration of any thing which may be sent to the 
committee. It was created originally solely to deal with this 
subject. It was, at first, broken into four sub-committees, that 
the work of gathering evidence might be more advantageously 
and speedily carried on. It became one committee, usually 
working together, only during a few weeks immediately preced- 
ing the bringing forward of its ultimate propositions. It would 
not be decorous for me to praise the committee or the work it 
did, but I may say with propriety that if it ever was a good 
committee, if it ever should have been created and composed as it 
was, it is a good committee now — better than it ever was before : 
better, because more familiar with this subject, because its mem- 
bers, having now become acquainted with each o.ther's views, 
and having become accustomed to act with each other, and hav- 
ing studied the whole subject committed to them, can proceed 
with much more hope of good results than ever before. Having 
a right to report at any time, and being led, on the part of this 
House, by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens], I see no reason why it can not consider and digest wisely 
and promptly whatever may be referred to it and make report." 

" "We are now considering a report from that very committee," 
said Mr. Stevens. "That committee made a report, and I have 
offered a substitute for the bill which they reported. If the 
gentleman thinks the report of that committee is best, then let 
him vote against my substitute. But why send this subject back 
again to the committee? The gentleman knows as well as I 
do how many different opinions there are in that committee; 
some of us believe in one thing, and some of us in another; 
some of us are very critical, and some of us are not. The idea 
that we can consider any thing in that committee, constituted as 
it is, in less than a fortnight, it seems to me is wholly out of 
the question ; and as we have only about some twenty working 
days in which to mature this bill in both branches of Congress, 
if we send this subject to that committee and let it take its time 
to consider it, and then have it reported here and considered 
again, I certainly need not say to gentlemen that that would be 
an end of the matter, at least for this session." 



MILITAR r BECOJfSTR UCTIOJf A CT. 615 

" The gentleman from Pennsylvania concurred in that report, ' 
replied Mr. Conklino;. "He had his full share in molding it 
and making it precisely what it was. He supported it then ; 
now he oifers a substitute .for it. AVhy ? Because the time 
which has elapsed since then, and the events which have tran- 
spired, have modified, he thinks, the exigencies of the case. Is 
not that as applicable to the judgment of the committee as to 
his own ? Is it not proper that it should have the opportunity 
of acting for once in the light of all the facts and circumstances 
as they are to day?" 

" Two or three bills on this subject," said Mr. Stevens, " have 
been referred during this session to that committee. Why has 
not the committee acted on them?" 

" If I were the chairman of the committee on the part of this 
House," replied Mr. Conkling, I should be able to ansAver that 
question, because then I could tell why I had not called the 
committee together. But as I am only a subordinate member 
of the committee, whose business it is to come when I am called, 
and never to call others, I am entirely unable to give the infor- 
mation for which the gentleman inquires." 

" If I could have any assurance," said Mr. Ashley, " that this 
committee would be able to report promptly a bill upon which 
this House could probably agree, I would not hesitate a single 
moment to vote for the reference of this measure to that com- 
mittee; but, believing that they will be unable to agree, I shall 
vote against a recommitment." 

In describing the character of the opposition arrayed against 
the Congressional plan of reconstruction, Mr. Ashley used the 
following emphatic language: "Why, sir, the assumption, the 
brazen-faced assumption of men who during the entire war 
were in open or secret alliance with the rebels, coming here now 
and joining hands with the apostate at the other end of the 
avenue, who is the leader, the recognized leader of a counter- 
revolution — a negative rebellion, as I said awhile ago — passes 
comprehension." 

" If intended to apply to us," said Mr. AVinfield, speaking for 
the Democratic members, " it is a base and unfounded slander." 

" So far as I am concerned, it is a base lie," said Mr. Hunter. 
For using these words, " condemned by gentlemen every-where, as 
well as by parliamentary law," the House passed a vote of censure 



51G THE THIBTT-JflJfTH COJ^^GRESS. 

on Mr. Huuter, and he was required to go forward and receive a 
public reprimand from the Speaker. 

On the 28th of January, the House having resumed the con- 
sideration of the bill to restore to the rebel States their full politi- 
cal rights, Mr. Julian expressed his belief that the time had come 
for action, and that having the ^great subject before them, they 
should proceed earnestly, and with little delay, to mature some 
measure which would meet the demand of the people. " Let us 
tolerate no further procrastination," said he; " and while we justly 
hold the President responsible for the trouble and mal-adminis- 
tration which now curse the South and disturb the peace of the 
country, let us remember that the national odium already per- 
petually linked with the name of Andrew Johnson will be shared 
by us if we fail in the great duty which is now brought to our 
doors." 

Mr. Julian differed with many others in his opinion of the real 
wants of the rebel States. " What these regions need," said he, 
" above all things, is not an easy and quick return to their for- 
feited rights in the Union, but government, the strong arm of 
power, outstretched from the central authority here in Washing- 
ton, making it safe for the freedmen of the South, safe for her 
loyal white men, safe for emigrants from the Old World and 
from the Northern States to go and dwell there ; safe for Northern 
capital and labor, Northern energy and enterprise, and Northern 
' ideas to set up their habitation in peace, and thus found a Chris- 
tian civilization and a living democracy amid the ruins of the past." 
"It would seem," said Mr. Cullom, "that the men who have 
been struggling so hard to destroy this country were and still are 
the instruments, however wicked, by which we are driven to give 
the black man justice, w4iether we will or no. 

" By the unholy persistence of rebels slavery was at last over- 
thrown. Their contempt of the Constitutional Amendment, now 
before the country, will place in the hands of every colored man 
of the South the ballot." 

The bill before the House was referred to the Committee on 
Keconstruction by a vote of eighty rcight to sixty-five. 

On the 4th of February, Mr. Williams, of Oregon, introduced 
into the Senate " A biU to provide for the more efiBcient govern- 
ment of the insurrectionary States," which was referred to the 
Committee on Reconstruction. 




^S-WGEPerme^'C^S 



Ha-^' 




■_,ii,'.J. J:i- WLLI^IAM 

;f.natop from ob-: 



MILITAB r EUCOJ^STE UCTIOJ^ A CT. 517 

This bill, having been considered by the Committee, was adopted 
by them, and was reported by their chairman to the House, on the 
6th of February, in the following form : 

"TF/icrcas, the pretended State Governments of the late so-called Confeder- 
ate States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, 
Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas were set up without the 
authority of Congress and without the sanction of the people ; and whereas 
said pretended governments afford no adequate protection for life or property, 
but countenance and encourage lawlessness and crime ; and whereas it is 
necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said so-called 
States until loyal and Republican State Governments can be legally estab- 
lished: Therefore, 

" Be it enacted ly the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled^ That said so-called States shall be 
divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of 
the United States, as hereinafter prescribed; and for that purpose Virg^ina 
shall constitute the first district, North Carolina and South Carolina the 
eecond district, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida the third district, Mississippi 
and Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district. 

"Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the Gen- 
eral of the army to assign to the command of each of said districts an officer 
of the regular army not below the rank of brigadier general, and to detail 
a sufiBcient force to enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his 
authority within the district to which he is assigned. 

"Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of each officer 
assigned, as aforesaid, to protect all persons in their rights of person and 
property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or 
cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and 
to this end he may allow civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try 
offenders, or when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of 
offenders he shall have power to organize military commissions or tribunals 
for that purpose, any thing in the constitution and laws of the so-called States 
to the contrary notwithstanding; and all legislative or judicial proceedings 
or processes to prevent the trial or proceedings of such tribunals, and all 
interference by said pretended State governments with the exercise of mili- 
tary authority under this act shall be void and of no effect. 

"Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That courts and judicial officers of the 
United States shall not issue writs of habeas corpus in behalf of persons in 
military custody unless some commissioned officer on duty in the district 
wherein the person is detained shall indorse upon said petition a statement 
certifying upon honor that he has knowledge or information as to the cause 
and circumstances of the alleged detention, arid that he believes the same to 
be rightful ; and further, that he believes that the indorsed petition is pre- 
ferred in good faith and in furtherance of justice, and not to hinder or delay 
the punishment of crime. All persons put under military arrest, by virtue 
of this act, shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or unusual 
punishment shall be inflicted. 



518 THE THIBTY-J^IJfTH COJfGRESS. 

"8ec. 5. And be it further enacted^ That no sentence of any military com- 
mission or tribunal hereby authorized, affecting the life or liberty of any 
person, shall be executed until it is approved by the officer in command of 
the district; and the laws and regulations for the government of the army 
shall not be aflFected by this act, except in so far as they conflict with its 
provisions," 

Mr. Stevens, having been remonstrated with by a Democratic 
member for expressing a wish to bring the question to vote with- 
out a prolonged debate, replied : " I am very willing that the 
debate which has been going on here for three weeks shall all be 
read over by the gentleman whenever he can take time to read 
it." " On behalf of the American people," said the same member, 
" I ask more time for debate." " I will see what the American 
people think of it in the morning. If they are generally for a 
prolongation of the debate, of course I will go with them. But I 
will wait until then, in order to ascertain what the people want." 

On the following day, February 7th, Mr. Stevens introduced the 
discussion with a brief speech. " This bill provides," said he, that 
" the ten disorganized States shall -be divided into five military 
districts, and that the commander of the army shall take charge 
of them through his lieutenants as governors, or you may call 
them commandants if you choose, not below the grade of briga- 
diers, who shall have the general supervision of the peace, quiet, 
and the protection of the people, loyal and disloyal, who reside 
within those precincts; and that to do so he may use, as the law 
of nations would authorize him to do, the legal tribunals where- 
ever he may deem them competent ; but they are to be considered 
of no validity per se, of no intrinsic force, no force in consequence 
of their origin, the question being wholly within the power of the 
conqueror, and to remain until that conqueror shall permanently 
supply their place with something else. I will say, in brief, that 
is the whole bill. It does not need much examination. One 
night's rest after its reading is enough to digest it." 

" Of all the various plans," said Mr. Brandegee, " which have 
been discussed in this hall for the past two years, to my mind 
it seems the plainest, the most appropriate, the freest from con- 
stitutional objection, and the best calculated to accomplish the 
master aims of reconstruction. 

" It begins the work of reconstruction at the right end, and 
employs the right tools for its accomplishment. It begins at the 



MILITARY BECOJ{STRUCTIOJ^ ACT. 519 

point where Grant left off the work, at Appomattox Court-house, 
and it holds those revolted communities in the grasp of war until 
the rebellion shall have laid down its spirit, as two years ago it 
formally. laid down its arms." 

Mr. LeBlond characterized the Committee on Reconstruction 
as " the maelstrom committee, which swallows up every thing that 
is good and gives out every thing that is evil." 

" There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech, 
"but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on 
the part of the American people to defend themselves. 

" I do not desire war ; but as one American citizen, I do prefer 
war to cowardly submission and total destruction of the funda- 
mental principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, 
nothing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded upon 
the bloody battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the 
American people again." 

" Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, " that in this Congress we can 
find men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the 
right of trial by jury, the great privilege of habeas corpus; men 
who are willing to reverse the axiom that the military should be 
subordinate to the civil power, and to establish the abhorred doc- 
trine resisted by the brave and free men of every age, that the 
military should be superior to the civil authority?" 

"'It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, " that the change 
proposed to be made by this bill in the management of the South- 
ern States is so violent as gentlemen on the other side would have 
us suppose. They seem to believe that now the people of those 
States govern themselves ; but the truth is, since the suppression 
of the rebellion, that is, since the surrender of the rebel armies in 
1865, the government of those States have been virtually in the 
hands of the President of the United States. 

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States 
from the people to the officers of the army, but only from the 
President to those officers." 

Mr. Farns worth, who next addressed the House, gave numer- 
ous authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated 
by rebels upon Union soldiers and citizens. " It is no longer a 
question of doubt," said he, " it can not be denied that the loyal 
men, the Union soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized 
and disloyal States are not protected. They are murdered with 



520 THE THIRTY- MIJTTH COJ^GBESS. 

impunity; they are despoiled of their goods and their property; 
they are banished, scattered, driven from the country." 

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic lan- 
guage. " You will carry this conflict on/' said he, " imtil you 
bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes 
of an earthquake ; a war that will cause the whole civilized world 
to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all 
her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at 
all to be compared." 

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. " Free 
government," said he, " brought him from a poor boy to as great 
a man as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washing- 
ton and will yet receive it. He will not submit to have the 
citadel of liberty invaded and destroyed without using the civil 
and military powers to prevent it. He will maintain the Con- 
stitution, sir, even to the spilling of blood." 

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord 
with his theory by substituting the phrase " the said States " for 
the words "so-called States." He also proposed some limitation 
of the extent to which the habeas corpus should be suspended. 
"When these men," said he, "shall have fulfilled their obliga- 
tions, and when the great people themselves shall have put, by 
their own rightful authority^ into the fundamental law the sub- 
lime decree, the nation's will, that no State shall deny to any 
mortal man the equal protection of the laws — not of the laws of 
South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State, and 
above all, sir, of the great law, the Constitution of our own 
country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to 
Oregon, and from Maine to Florida — then, sir, by assenting 
thereto those States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, 
I labor and for that I strive." 

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, 
" is to be left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the 
color of authority they exercise under illegal but de facto State 
governments to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them 
any protection against murder and all the wrongs that rebels can 
inflict on loyal men, we can not, dare not refuse to pass this bill." 

Since, however, the bill did not propose any " plan of reorgan- 
izing State governments in the late rebel States," Mr. Lawrence 
read amendments which he desired to introduce at the proper 



MILITAB Y BECOJ^STE UCTIOJ^ A CT. 521 

time, providing that the laws of the District of Columbia, " not 
locally inapplicable," should* be in force in the rebel territory 
and that the United Stitcs courts should have jurisdiction. 

Mr. Hise declared this a " stupid, cruel, unwise, and unconsti- 
tutional measure." " If I had not been prepared," said he, " by 
other measures hitherto adopted and others hitherto introduced 
into this House, I should not have been less startled at the intro- 
duction of this than if I had received the sudden intelligence that 
the ten States enumerated in this bill had been sunk by some 
great convulsion of nature and submerged under an oceanic 
deluge." 

" This is not, strictly speaking, a measure of reconstruction," 
said Mr. Ingersoll, " but a measure looking simply to the enforce- 
ment of order. It seem*s to me clear, then, that,' not only under 
the laws of war and under the laws of nations, but under the ex- 
press authority of the Constitution itself, Congress possesses the 
rightful authority to establish military governments, as proposed 
by the bill under consideration." 

Referring to Mr. LeBlond's anticipated war, Mr. Ingersoll 
said : " I desire to ask the gentleman Avhere he is going to get 
his soldiers to make war upon the Government and the Congress 
of the United States? You will hardly find them in the rebel 
States. They have had enough of war; they have been thor- 
oughly whipped, and do not desire to be whipped again. You 
will not get them from the loyal people of the Northern or South- 
ern States. If you get any at all, you may drum up a few recruits 
from the Democratic ranks, but in the present weak and shattered 
condition of that party you would hardly be able to raise a very 
formidable army, and I tell the gentleman if the party decreases 
in the same ratio in the coming year as it has in the' last, the 
whole party together would not form a respectable corps d'armee." 

"How about the bread and butter brigade?" interposed a 
member. 

" I did not think of that heroic and patriotic band," replied 
Mr. Ingersoll, " but I do not apprehend much danger from that 
source ; it would be a bloodless conflict ; we would have no use 
either for the sword or musket ; all that would be necessary to 
make a conquest over them would be found in the commissary 
department. Order out the bread and butter and peace would 
be restored." 



522 THE THIRTY- J^IKTR COJfGBESS. 

Mr. Shanklin warned the House of the danger of establishing 
military governments in the South. " " You may be in the plen- 
itude of power to-day/' he said, in conclusion, "and you may 
be ousted to-morrow. And I hope, if you do not cease these 
outrages upon the people of the country, such as you propose 
here, such as are attempting to be inflicted by your Freedmen's 
Bureau and your Civil Rights Bills, that the time will not 
be long before that army which the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Ingersoll] seemed to think could not be raised — an army 
armed with ballots, and not with bayonet — will march to the 
polls and hurl the advocates of this and its kindred measures 
out of their places, and fill them with men who appreciate more 
highly and justly the rights of citizens and of freemen, with 
statesmen whose minds can grasp our* whole country and ita 
rights and its wants, and whose hearts are in sympathy with 
the noble, the brave, and the just, whether they live in the 
sunny South or the ice-bound regions of the North." 

" I hail this measure," said Mr. Thayer, " as interrupting this 
baleful calm, w^hich, if not disturbed by a proper exercise of 
legislative power upon this subject, may be succeeded by disaster 
and collision. It furnishes at least an initial point from which 
we can start in the consideration and adjustment of the great 
question of reconstruction. I regard this as a measure which 
lays the grasp of Congress upon this great question — a grasp 
which is to hold on to it until it shall be finally settled. I 
regard it as a measure which is to take that great question out 
of that sea of embarrassment and sluggish inactivity in which, 
through the course which the President has thought proper to 
pursue, it now rests." 

"For our neglect," said Mr. Harding, of Illinois, "to exert 
the military power of the Government, we are responsible for 
the blood and suffering which disgrace this republic. Let us go 
back, then, or rather let us come up to where we were before, 
and exercise jurisdiction over the territory conquered from the 
rebels, which jurisdiction the President has given up to those 
rebels, to the great suffering and injury of the Government and 
of loyal people." 

" Let it be remembered all the time," said Mr. Shellabarger, 
" that your country has a right to its life, and that the powers 
of your Government are given for its preservation. Let it be 



Ml LI TAR Y RECOJ^STR UCTIOM A CT. 523 

remembered that one portion of your republic has fallen into a 
state of rebellion, and is still in a state of war against your 
Government, and that the powers of the Government are to be 
exercised for the purposes of the protection and the defense of 
the loyal, and the disloyal too, in that part of the republic; and 
that, for the purpose of that defense, you arc authorized to sus- 
pend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and to exercise 
such extraordinary powers as are necessary to the preservation 
of the great life of the nation. Let these things be remembered; 
and then let it also be remembered that the law-making power of 
the Government not only controls the President, but controls the 
purposes and the ends and the objects of war, and, of course, the 
movements of the armies that are to be employed in war. Let 
these things be remembered, and it seems to me that all the diffi- 
culties with which it is sought to surround this measure will at 
once disappear." 

"What carried our elections overwhelmingly?" asked Mr. 
Hotchkiss. "It was the story of the Southern refugees told 
to the people of the North and the West. They told us they 
demanded protection. They enlisted the sympathy of Northern 
soldiers by telling that the very guerrillas who hung upon the 
skirts of our army during the war were now murdering Southern 
soldiers who fought on the Union side, and murdering peaceful 
citizens, murdering black men who were our allies. We prom- 
ised the people if we were indorsed we would come back here 
and protect them, and yet not a step has been taken." 

Mr. Griswold regretted to vote against a measure proposed by 
those whom he believed to " have at heart the best interest of 
the whole country." " It seems to me," said he, " that the pro- 
visions of this bill will lead us into greater danger than is justified 
by the evils we seek to correct. It is, Mr. Speaker, a tremen- 
dous stride that we propose to make by this bill to subject to 
military control ten million people who have once been partners 
of this common country, and who are to be united with us in 
its future trials and fortunes. This bill proposes to place all the 
rights of life, liberty, and happiness exclusively in the control 
of a mere military captain. This bill contains no provisions 
for the establishment in the future of civil governments there ; 
it simply provides that for an indefinite period in the future a 
purely military power shall have exclusive control and jurisdic- 



524 THE THIETY-KIMTE COJTGBESS. 

tion there. That is, therefore, to me, another and a very serious 
objection to this bill." 

"There is a necessity," said Mr. Raymond, for some measure 
of protection to the people of the Southern States. I think it 
is clear that life, liberty, and property are not properly guarded 
by law, are not safe throughout those Southern States. They are 
not properly protected by the courts and judicial tribunals of 
those States ; they are not properly protected by the civil author- 
ities that are in possession of political power in those States." 

Of the pending bill, he said : " It is a simple abnegation of 
all attempts for the time to protect the people in the Southern 
States by the ordinary exercise of civil authority. It hands over 
all authority in those States to officers of the army of the United 
States, and clothes them as officers of the army with complete, 
absolute, unrestricted power to administer the affairs of those 
States according to their sovereign will and pleasure. In my 
opinion there has not occurred an emergency which justifies a 
resort to this extreme remedy. The military force ought to 
follow the civil authority, and not lead it, not take its place, 
not supersede it." 

" We must compel obedience to the Union," said Mr. Garfield, 
"and demand protection for its humblest citizen wherever the 
flag floats. We must so exert the power of the nation that it 
shall be deemed both safe and honorable to have been loyal in 
the midst of treason. We must see to it that the frightful car- 
nival of blood now raging in the South shall continue no longer. 
The time has come when we must lay the heavy hand of mili- 
tary authority upon these rebel communities and hold them in 
its grasp till their madness is past." 

Mr. Stevens having expressed a wish to have an immediate 
vote, Mr. Banks remarked: "I believe that a day or two de- 
voted to a discussion of this subject of the reconstruction of the 
Government will bring us to a solution in which the two houses 
of Congress will agree, in which the people of this country will 
sustain us, and in which the President of the United States will 
give us his support." 

"I have not the advantage," replied Mr. Stevens, "of the 
secret negotiations which the distinguished gentleman from Mas- 
sachusetts [Mr. Banks] has, and from Avhich he seems to expect 
such perfect harmony between the President and the Congress 



MILITARY RECOJfSTRUCTIOJ^ ACT. 525 

of the United States within a few days. If I had that advan- 
tage, I do not know what effect it might have upon me. Not 
having it, I can not, of course, act upon it." 

" In the remarks which I made," said INIr. Banks, " I made 
no alhision to any negotiations with the President. I have had 
no negotiations with the President of the United States, nor do 
I know his opinions, and in the vote which I shall give upon 
this question, neither the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens] nor any other man has the right to assume that I 
accept the policy of the Executive in the smallest particular. I 
hope for a change of his position ; I think that it is not impos- 
sible. At all events, I thmk it is something which is worth 
our while to try for." 

The previous question was moved by Mr. Stevens; but a 
majority refusing to second the motion, the discussion was con- 
tinued. 

Mr. Kasson denied the existence of a right in Congress "to 
establish a military government over people who have been in 
insurrection." He proposed as a substitute for the pending 
measure "A bill to establish an additional article of war for 
the more complete suppression of the insurrection against the 
United States." This provided for a division of the rebel ter- 
ritory into military districts, as did the original bill, and au- 
thorized commanders to declare martial law Mdierever it should 
be necessary for the "complete suppression of violence and dis- 
order." 

Mr. Ashley moved an amendment providing for the restoration 
to loyal owners of property confiscated by the rebel government, 
and providing that military government should cease so soon as 
the people of the rebel States should adopt State constitutions 
securing to all citizens equal protection of the. laws, including 
the right of the elective franchise, and should ratify the proposed 
amendment to the Constitution. 

Mr. Eaymond thought that, on account of the great diversity 
of opinion, the whole subject should be referred to a select com- 
mittee, who should be instructed to report within three or four 
days a bill which should " provide temporarily for the protection 
of rights and the preservation of the peace in the States lately in 
rebellion, and also for the speedy admission of those States to 
their relations in the Union upon the basis of the Constitutional 



526 THE THIBTY-JflJfTH COjYGRESS. 

Amendment." Thus he hoped a result could be reached which 
" would command the support of Congress and of the country, 
and the approval, or at least the assent, of the Executive." 

Mr. Boutwell remarked that previous propositions having been 
referred to the Committee on Reconstruction, they had agreed 
upon the bill before the House with a unanimity which no other 
report had ever obtained, nor had any bill submitted by that 
committee ever been so carefully considered as this. " To-day," 
said he, " there are eight millions and more of people, occupying 
six hundred and thirty thousand square miles of the territory of 
this country, who are writhing under cruelties nameless in their 
character — injustice such as has not been permitted to exist in 
any other country in modern times; and all this because in this 
capital there sits enthroned a man who, so far as the executive 
department is concerned, guides the destinies of the republic in 
the interest of rebels ; and because, also, in those ten former States 
rebellion itself, inspired by the executive department of this Gov- 
ernment, wields all authority, and is the embodiment of law and 
power every-where. Until in the South this obstacle to recon- 
struction is removed, there can be no effectual step taken toward 
the reorganization of the Government." 

" A well man needs no remedies," said Mr. Niblack, in a speech 
against the bill ; " it is only when he is sick that you can require 
him to submit to medicinal applications. A country at peace does 
not need and ought not to allow martial law and other summary 
remedies incident to a state of war. The highest and dearest in- 
terests of this country are made subordinate to party exigencies 
and to special and particular interests. No wonder, then, that 
trade languishes and commerce declines." 

On the 12th of February, Mr. Bingham proposed an amend- 
ment making the restoration of the rebel States conditional upon 
their adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, and imposing 
upon them, meanwhile, the military government provided by the 
pending bill. , 

Mr. Kelley advocated the bill as reported from the committee. 
'' This," said he, " is little more than a mere police bill. The 
necessity for it arises from the perfidy of the President of the 
United States. Had he been true to the duties of his high office 
and his public and repeated pledges, there would have been no 
necessity for considering such a bill." 



MILITARY EECOJ^STRUCTIOJy ACT. 527 

" Throughout the region of the unreconstructed States," said 
Mr. Maynard, " the animating, life-giving principle of the rebell- 
ion is as thoroughly in possession of the country and of all the 
political power there to-day as it ever has been since the first 
gun was fired upon Fort Sumter. The rebellion is alive. It is 
strong — strong in the number of its votaries, strong in its social 
influences, strong in its political power, strong in the belief that 
the executive department of this Government is in sympathy and 
community of purpose with them, strong in the belief that the 
controlling majority of the supreme judiciary of the land is with 
them in legal opinion, strong in the belief that the controversy 
in this body between impracticable zeal and incorrigible timidity 
will prevent any thing of importance being accomplished or any 
legislation matured." 

" It is," said ISIr. Allison, " because of the interference of the 
President of the United States with the military law which ex- 
ists in those States that this bill is rendered necessary. In my 
judgment, if we had to-day an Executive who was desirous of 
enforcing the laws of the United States to protect loyal men in 
those States, instead of defending the rebel element, this bill 
would not be needed." 

Mr. Blaine submitted an amendment providing that any one 
of the " late so-called Confederate States " might be restored to 
representation and relieved of military rule when, in addition to 
having accepted the Constitutional Amendment, it should have 
conferred the elective franchise impartially upon all. male citizens 
over twenty-one years of age. 

Mr. Blaine maintained that the people in the elections of 1866 
had declared in favor of " universal, or, at least, impartial suf- 
frage as the basis of restoration." 

On the 13th of February the discussion was continued. "That 
the spirit of rebellion still lives," said Mr. Van Horn, of New 
York, "and now thrives in the South no sane man can deny; 
that the determination exists to make their rebellion honorable 
and the loyalty of the South a lasting disgrace and a permanent 
badge of dishonor is equally true and can not be denied. The 
leaders of the rebellion, being in power in all the ten States un- 
reconstructed, still defy the authority of the United States to a 
great extent, and deny the power of the loyal millions of the 
countrv, who have saved our nation's life against their treason 



528 THE THIllTY-NIJ^TH COJS^GBESS. 

and rebellion, to i^rescribe terms of settlement of this great con- 
troversy, and deny also that they have lost any rights they had 
before the w'ar or committed any treason against the Govern- 
ment." 

The measure before the House, as it came from the Committee 
on Reconstruction, "was not intended as a reconstruction bill," 
according to the interpretation of Mr. Stevens. " It was in- 
tended simply as a police bill to protect the loyal men from 
anarchy and murder, until this Congress, taking a little more 
time, can suit gentlemen in a bill for the admission of all those 
rebel States upon the basis of civil government." 

The various amendments proposed were designed by their 
authors to add a jjlan of reconstruction to the pending bill. Of 
these Mr. Boutwell remarked : " Without examininsr into the de- 
tails of the amendments, I have this to say, that any general 
Ijroposition for the restoration of these States to the Union upon 
any basis not set forth in an act of Congress is fraught with the 
greatest danger to future peace and prosj)erity of the rej)ublic." 

The amendments of Mr. Bingham and Mr. Blaine Mere finally 
combined by their authors. The combination made an amend- 
ment providing that the "States lately in insurrection" should 
be restored and relieved of military rule upon their ratification 
of the Constitutional Amendment and adoption of impartial 
suffrage. In order to " disentangle what seemed so much entan- 
gled," it was moved that the bill be recommitted to the Judiciary 
Committee, with instructions to report back immediately the 
amendment of Messrs. Blaine and Bingham. 

Mr. Stevens then addressed the House, premising that in his 
state of health a few words must suffice. He felt a moral de- 
pression in viewing the condition of the party responsible for the 
doings of Congress. " For the last few months," said he, " Con- 
gress has been sitting here, and while the South has been bleed- 
ing at every pore, Congress has done nothing to protect the loyal 
people there, white or black, either in their persons, in their 
liberty, or in their property." 

Of his previous bill,, which had been consigned to its tomb in 
being referred -to the Committee on Beconstruction, INIr. Stevens 
said: "I thought it was a good bill; I had labored upon it in 
conjunction with several committees of loyal men from the South 
for four mouths; I had altered and realtered it, written and re- 



MILITARY RECOKSTETJCTIOJ^ ACT. 620 

written it four several times, and found that it met the appro- 
bation of numerous societies and meetings in all the Southern 
States. It was, therefore, not altogctlier my fault if it was not 
so good a bill as might be found; but I did think that, after 
all, it was uncivil, unjust, indecent not to attempt to amend it 
and make it better, to see Avhether we could do something to 
enable our friends in the Sputhcrn States to establish institutions 
according to the principles of republican government." 

Mr. Stevens deprecated a disposition among his friends to be 
hypercritical in relation to mere verbal details. "If I might 
presume upon my age," said he, " without claiming any of the 
wisdom of Nestor, I would suggest to the young gentlemen 
around me that the deeds of this burning crisis, of this solemn 
day, of this thrilling moment, will cast their shadows far into 
the future and will make their impress upon the annals of our 
history, and that we shall appear upon the bright pages of that 
history just in so far as we cordially, without guile, without bick- 
ering, without small criticisms, lend our aid to promote the great 
cause of humanity and universal liberty." 

The question being taken on the motion to refer to the Com- 
mittee on the Judiciary, it was decided in the negative — yeas, 
69 ; nays, 94. The question was then taken on the passage of 
the bill. It passed the House — one hundred and nine voting in 
the affirmative, and fifty-five in the negative. 

" I wish to inquire, INIr. Speaker," said Mr. Stevens, " if it is 
in order for me now to say that we indorse the language of 
good old Laertes, that Heaven rules as yet, and there are gods 
above." 

At the evening session of the Senate on the same day, the bill 
"to provide for the more efficient government of the insurrec- 
tionary States " was announced as having passed the House, and 
at once received its first reading. Mr. Williams gave notice of 
his intention to propose an amendment, but on the following 
day, when the Senate proceeded to consider the subject, he said 
that being impressed with the necessity of the passage of the 
bill, and fearing that any amendment might endanger if not 
defeat it, he had concluded not to present his amendment. 

Mr. Johnson said that the adoption of the amendment would 
make the bill much less objectionable to him, although he could 
not vote for it even if amended. He then offered the amend- 
34 



530 THE TRIETY-KIKTH COJTGRESS. 

ment, Avliicli Avas substantially the same as that proposed by- 
Messrs. Bingham and Blaine in the House of Representatives. 

Mr. Stewart regretted that the Senator from Oregon had 
changed his mind in regard to this amendment. "The mili- 
tary bill without that/' said he, " is an acknowledgment that, 
after two years of discussion and earnest thought, we are unable 
to reconstruct, and are compelled to turn the matter over to the 
military. It seems to me that the people of the United States 
want and demand something more than a military government 
for the South." 

Several Senators thought Mr. Stewart was unnecessarily troubled 
about military governments in the South. " Are we," asked Mr. 
Morrill, "who have stood here for five long, bloody years, and 
witnessed the exercise of military power over these rebel States, 
to be frightened now by a declaration of that sort? That is not 
the temper in which I find myself to-day. I have got so ac- 
customed, if you please, to the exercise of this authority " 

" That is the trouble," said Mr. Stewart. 

" That has not been our trouble that we have exercised power," 
said Mr. Morrill; "that has been the salvation of the nation. 
The trouble has been from the hesitation to exercise authority 
when authority was required." 

Mr. Wilson thought that the wisest course would be to pass 
the bill just as it came from the House. If it was to be amended 
at all, he would propose an amendment that all citizens should 
"equally possess the right to pursue all lawful avocations and 
receive the equal benefits of the public schools." 

"I think the amendments," said Mr. Howard, "entirely in- 
compatible with the scheme and provisions of the bill itself, and 
that gentlemen will discover that incompatibility on looking 
into it." 

Mr. Henderson thought that the remedy proposed by him long 
before would be found the only cure for the ills of the nation. 
" I offered," said he, " twelve months ago, a proposition, as a con- 
stitutional amendment, that was to give political rights to the 
negroes. Some Senators said it was a humbug, that it was Jacob 
Townsend's Sarsaparilla, or some thing to that effect, that it 
would amount to nothing. Now, I will ask what other protec- 
tion can you give to a Union man in the Southern States than 
the ballot?" 



MILITAR r RECOJ{STR UCTIOJT A CT. 5S1 

Since the bill must be passed both Houses and go to the Pres- 
ident by the following Tuesday, in order to give Congress time to 
pass it over his veto, ]\Ir, Williams, who had the bill in charge, 
was desirous of having it passed upon in the Senate on the 
evening of the day of this discussion, February 15th. Several 
Senators protested against this as unreasonable haste. " It is 
extraordinary," said Mr. Doolittle, " that a bill of this kind, that 
proposes to establish a military despotism over eight million 
people and a country larger than England, France, and Spain 
combined, is to be pressed to a vote in this Senate the first day 
it is taken up for consideration." 

" If the measure Avill not bear argument," said Mr. Hendricks, 
" then let it be passed in the dark hours of the night. I think 
it is becoming, when despotism is established in this free land, 
that the best blood that ever ran in mortal veins was shed to 
make free, that that despotism shall be established when the sun 
does not shed its bright light upon the earth. It is a work for 
darkness and not for light." 

" He talks about establishing a despotism," said Mr. Hender- 
son, " and gets into a perfect fret about it. Why, sir, the South- 
ern States have presented nothing but a despotism for the last 
six years. During the rebel rule it was a despotism, the veriest 
despotism ever established upon earth ; and since the rebel rule 
ceased, the President of the United States certainly has governed 
the Southern States without ever consulting Congress on the 
subject." 

The Senate held an evening session for the consideration of 
this bill. INIr.v Hendricks proposed to modify the pending 
amendment so as to provide for intpartial rather than universal 
suffrage. He thought that States should be allowed to limit 
suffrage. Mr. Saulsbury would not vote for this amendment be- 
cause he was unwilling to " touch, taste, or handle the unclean 
thing." On the other hand, Mr. Davis could vote for it because 
he preferred a "little unclean thing" to "a big one." Mr. 
Hendricks finally withdrew his amendment. 

Mr. Doolittle hoiked that the majority would seriously w^eigh 
this question because on it might depend whether the people of 
the South would accept the Constitutional Amendment, and ac- 
cept the projiosition necessary to get rid of military despotism. 

" Make them," said Mr. Wilson. 



532 THE THIRTY-NIMTII COjYGRESS. 

" I ask," said INIr. Doolittle, " if that is the true language of a 
statesman, to say to a people who have been educated in the 
largest liberty, a people in whose veins the Anglo-Saxon blood 
is flowing, which for a thousand years has been fighting against 
des25otism of every form, ' You must accept this position at the 
point of the bayonet, or forever live with the bayonet at your 
throats ? ' Is that the way to make peace ? " 

" I think it is statesmanship," replied Mr. "Wilson, " to settle this 
question of reconstruction upon the solid basis of the perfect equal- 
ity of rights and privileges among citizens of the United States. 
Colored men are citizens, and they have just as much right as this 
race whose blood has been fighting against oppression for a thousand 
years, as he says, and any settlement of this civil war upon any other 
basis than perfect equality of rights and jirivileges among citizens 
of the United States is not statesmanship; it is mere trifling; 
only keeping open questions for future controversy. Nothing is 
settled unless it is settled upon the basis of justice." 

" I shall vote for this amendment," said Mr. Lane, " believing 
that it is necessary to make a perfect system for the restoration 
of the lately rebellious States." 

" The amendment," said Mr. Johnson, " is objectionable to me 
only upon the ground that it denies to those States the right of 
coming into the Union entitled to representation until they ex- 
tend the suffrage, because I believe the right of suffrage is a 
matter with which the Congress of the United States has no 
concern." 

" I know perfectly well," said Mr. Buckalew, " that a vote for 
this amendment, although given under circumstances which do 
not commit me to the proportion as a final one, will be misun- 
derstood and perverted. It will be said throughout the country 
of each of those who stand in the position in which I stand, that 
we have departed, to some extent at least, from that position 
which we have hitherto maintained, and maintained against all 
the influences of the time, against the pressure of circumstances 
which have swept many from our side and carried them into the 
large and swollen camp of the majority. Sir, I for one am am- 
bitious of being known as one among that number of men who 
have kept their faith, who have followed their convictions, who 
have obeyed the dictation of duty in the worst of times* who did 
not bend when the storm beat hardest and strongest against them, 



MILITAR T RECOMSTR VCTIOK A CT. 533 

but kept their honor unsullied, their faith intact, their self-respect 
unbroken and entire." 

" My object is," said Mr. Henderson, ^vhen proposing to mod- 
ify the pending amendment, " to secure the franchise, and after 
that is secured, to go forward and establish civil governments in 
the Southern States." 

Extended arguments against the measure were made by Mr. 
Johnson and Mr. Hendricks. At twelve o'clock the minority 
desired to adjourn, and the friends of the measure would have 
been willing to do so could an understanding have been had as 
to an hour on the following day when the vote would be taken. 

Mr. McDougall would submit to no such limitation upon free 
speech. "I do not expect myself," said he, "to speak at any 
great length, but yet if upon careful consideration I should choose 
to do so, or if possessing the recollections of past times and mem- 
ories and reasons and considerations that yet lay in my hidden 
memories I shall choose to talk for a longer period, I shall claim 
the right to do so." 

"I am anxious to give my views on this subject," said Mr. 
Davis. " I do not feel able to give them at this late hour of the 
night; still, I believe I could hang on for thi'ce or four hours if 
I was disposed to do so, [laughter,] but I believe that to-morrow 
I should not occupy more than at the farthest two hours of the 
time of the Senate." 

Numerous amendments w^ere proposed, much discursive talk 
was indulged in, and many motions to adjourn were voted down. 
At length, three o'clock of Saturday morning, February 16th, 
having arrived, an adjournment was brought about by means of 
a very long amendment proposed by Mr. Henderson as a substi- 
tute for the entire bill. This opening up a new discussion, the 
fi'iends of the pending bill saw the impossibility of coming to a 
speedy vote, and consented to an adjournment. 

On the reassembling of the Senate on Saturda}^ February 
16th, ]\Ir. Doolittle delivered a very long speech in opposition to 
the bill, and in vindication of his political course which had been 
called in question by the " Radicals of Wisconsin." " I rise," 
said he, " to plead for what I believe to be the life of the repub- 
lic, and for that spirit which gives it life. I stand here, also, to 
answer for myself; because, foreseeing and resisting from the 
beginning what I knew must follow as the logical consequences 



534 THE TEIRTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

of the aclo2)tiou of certain fundamental heresies originating in 
]\Iassacliusctts, and of which the honorable Senator upon my 
rio-ht [jNIr. Sumner] is the advocate and champion, I have been 
for more than eighteen months denounced in my State by many 
of my former political associates and friends." 

At the evening session of the Senate, ISIr. Saulsbury and Mr. 
Davis delivered extended speeches against the measure. " I ap- 
peal to you, sir," said Mr. Saulsbury ; " I appeal to those who 
exercise political power in this country now, by all the memories 
that cluster around the glorious past ; by the recollection of the 
noble deeds and heroic sufferings of our ancestors, for you and for 
me, for your posterity and for my posterity ; by all the bright 
realizations which might be ours in this present hour ; by all the 
bright future and all the glories which are in that immediate 
future, stop your aggressions upon the Constitution of your 
country." 

The vote having been taken on the amendment proposed by 
Mr. Johnson and the substitute of INIr. Henderson, they were 
both rejected. 

Mr. Sherman then offered an amendment in the nature of a 
substitute, the preamble of which declared that " No legal State 
governments or adequate protection for life or property now exist 
in the rebel States." It retained the military feature of the 
original bill, with the modification that the President, instead of 
the General of the army, should appoint district commanders. 
The most important part of the amendment was a plan of recon- 
struction, which added a new section to the bill in the following 
form: 

" Sec. 5. And he it further enacted, That when the people of any one of 
said rebel States shall have formed a Constitution of government in con- 
formity -with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed 
by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State 
twenty-one y%ars old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous con- 
dition of servitude, who have been resident in said State for one year pre- 
vious to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for 
participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law, and when such 
Constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall bo enjoyed by all 
such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of dele- 
gates, and when such Constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the per- 
sons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors of 
delegates, and when such Constitution shall have been submitted to Con- 



MILITARY BECOJ^STRUCTIOM ACT. 535 

gress for examination and appro\ul, and Congress shall have appointed the 
same, and wlien said State, by a vote of its Legislature elected under said 
Constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States proposed by the Tliirty-ninth Congress, and known as article 
fourteen, and when said article shall have become a part of the Constitution 
of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation 
in Congress, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom 
on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the 
preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State." 

Mr. Sherman made a brief speech in expUmation of the bill. 
"All there is material in the bill," said he, " is in the first two 
lines of the preamble and the fifth section, in my judgment. The 
first two lines may lay the foundation, by adopting the proclama- 
tion issued first to North Carolina, that the rebellion had swept 
away all the civil governments in the Southern States ; and the 
fifth section points out the mode by which the people of those 
States, in their own manner, without any limitations or restric- 
tions by Congress, may get back to full representation in Con- 
gress." 

After numerous propositions to amend, and speeches against 
the bill by Messrs. Hendricks, Cowan, Buckalew and McDou- 
gall, the Senate reached a vote upon the bill at six o'clock 
on Sunday morning. Twenty-nine voted in the affirmative, 
namely : 

Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Cattell, Chandler, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, 
Fogg, Frelinghuysen, Grimes, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, 
Morrill, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Ross, Sherman, Stewart, Trumbull, Van 
Winkle, Wade, Willey, Williams, Wilson, and Yates. 

Ten voted in the negative, to-wit: 

Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Hendricks, McDougall, Nes- 
mith, Norton, Patterson, and Saulsbury. 

The Senate amended the title of the bill by substituting 
the word "rebel" for "insurrectionary." Thus passed in the 
Senate the great measure entitled "A bill to provide for the more 
efficient government of the rebel States." 

On Monday, February 18th, the bill, as amended, came before 
the House. Mr. Stevens moved that the amendments of the 
Senate be non-concurred in, and that the House ask a Commit- 
tee of Conference. ' . 



63G THE THIRTY-KIKTE: COJ^GRESS. 

Mr. Bout well oi^posed the amendmeut. " If I did not be- 
lieve " said lie, " that this bill, in the form in which it now 
comes to us from the Senate, was fraught with great and perma- 
nent danger to the country, I would not attempt to resist further 
its passage." 

He objected to the bill on the ground that it proposed to re- 
construct the rebel State governments at once, through the agency 
of disloyal men, and that it gave additional power to the Presi- 
dent when he had failed to use the vast power which he already 
possessed in behalf of loyalty and justice. 

Mr. Stokes saw in the bill the principle of universal amnesty 
and luiivcrsal suffrage. " I would rather have nothing," said he, 
" if these governments are reconstructed in a way that will place 
the rebels over Union men." 

"Now, what has the Senate done?" Mr. Stevens asked. "Sent 
back to us an amendment which contains every thing else but pro- 
tection. It has sent us back a bill which raises the whole ques- 
tion in dispute as to the best mode of reconstructing these States 
by distant and future pledges which this Congress has no author- 
ity to make and no power to execute. What power has this Con- 
gress to say to a future Congress, When the Southern States have 
done certain things, you shall admit them, and receive their 
members into this House?" 

" Our friends," said he, in another part of his remarks, " who 
love this bill, love it now because the President is to execute it, 
as he has executed every law for the last two years, by the mur- 
der of Union men, and by despising Congress and flinging into 
our teeth all that we seek to have done." 

Mr. Stevens thought that in two hours a Committee of Con- 
ference could frame a bill and report it to the House free from 
all these difficulties — free from all this extraneous matter — 
which would protect every loyal man in the Southern States, and 
do no injustice to the disloyal. 

Mr. Blaine supported the bill as it came from the Senate. 
" Congress," said he, " no more guarantees, under this bill, the 
right of any rebel in any State to vote than did Congress guar- 
antee to the rebels in Tennessee the right to vote." 

"Although this bill," said Mr. Wilson of Iowa, "does not 
attain all I desire to accomplish, it does embrace much upon 
which I have insisted. It reaches far beyond any thing Avhich 



MILITARY RECOJfSTRUCTIOJr ACT. 537 

the most sanguine of us hoped for a year ago. It secures equal 
suffrage to all loyal men ; it sets aside the pretended governments 
which now abuse power in the rebel States ; it insists on the rat- 
ification of the Constitutional Amendment, under the operation of 
Avhich all the rebels who now occupy official position in the States 
affected by this bill will be rendered ineligible to office, State or 
national ; it presents an affirmative policy, on the part of Con- 
gress, hostile to that of the President ; it demonstrates the ability 
of Congress to agree upon a given line of future action; and, 
finally, it reserves to Congress jurisdiction over the whole case 
when the people of any Southern disorganized State may present 
a Constitution and ask for admission to this body as a part of 
the governing power of the nation. There is too much of good 
in this to be rejected. I will vote to concur in the amendment 
of the Senate." 

Mr. Bingham maintained that in the bill, as it passed the 
House, they had voted as extensive powers to the President as 
Avere conferred upon him by the bill as amended by the Senate. 
The former bill provided that the General in command of the 
army should detail army officers ; but all officers of the army are 
under command of the Commander-in-chief as constituted by the 
supreme law of the land. " For myself," said he, " I had rather 
that my right hand should forget its cunning, and that my tongue 
should cleave to the roof of my mouth, than to find myself here 
so fidse to my own convictions, and so fidse to the high trust com- 
mitted to me by that people who sent me here as to vote against 
this bill." 

"This bill," said Mr. Farnsworth, "provides a platform ten 
steps in advance of the platform upon which we went to the 
people last fall. We then only expected the ratification of the 
amendment to the Constitution proposed by Congress at its last 
session, and the formation of Constitutions, republican in form, 
which should give the people there the right to send loyal men 
here as Senators and Representatives. But by this bill we extend 
impartial suffrage to the black man — universal suffrage." 

" I am one of those who believe we ought to do something," 
said Mr. Schenck. "I believe we ought to declare to these rebel 
States, as we do by this bill, that they shall be put under mar- 
tial law, and held by .the strong hand to keep the peace until 
they have complied Avith whatever conditions are imposed upon 



538 THE THIRTY-KIKTH CONGRESS. 

them. But ^vhile we do this, I think it equally important to an- 
nounce to them, to announce to the country, to announce to our 
constituents as the completion of the whole platform upon which 
we go before the nation, the terms which we require of them." 

Mr. Garfield favored the Senate amendment. " There are some 
gentlemen," said he, " who live among the eagles on the high 
mountain peaks, beyond the limit of perpetual frost, and they see 
the lineaments in the face of freedom so much clearer than I do, 
whenever any measure comes here that seems almost to grasp our 
purpose, they rise and tell us it is all poor and mean and a sur- 
render of liberty." 

"These terms embrace, in my judgment," said Mr. Thayer, 
"every guarantee, every safeguard, and every check which it 
is pro])er for us to demand or apply. Upon these foundations 
we can safely build, for by them we retain the final control of 
the question in our own hands." 

Mr. Hotchkiss opposed the bill as amended. " If you allow 
this bill to go into operation as it now stands," said he, "with- 
out making any amendment of its provisions, and permit these 
elections to be held, as they must necessarily be held under this 
bill, under the authority, control, and regulation of the rebel gov- 
ernments in those States, there will be no security whatever, and 
you will have the elections in New Orleans held under the con- 
trol of Mayor Monroe and the mob which he used to such fell 
purpose last summer. That is the entertainment to which this 
bill invites us. 

" I regard this as a flank movement," said Mr. Bromwell, " by 
which is to be brought about that darling scheme of certain poli- 
ticians — universal amnesty and universal suffrage. Whether it 
end in universal suffrage or not, one thing is certain, it is uni- 
versal amnesty." 

" It would be emphatically," said Mr. Donnelly, " a govern- 
ment of rebels. I say a government of rebels, because although 
the amendment which has reached us from the Senate contains 
the words, 'Except such as may be disfranchised for participa- 
tion in the rebellion,' that disfranchisement has to come from 
the rebels themselves, and surely there is no man upon this floor 
weak enough to suppose that they will . so disfranchise them- 
selves." 

Mr. LeBlond opposed both bills. Of the one before the House, 



MILITARY BECO^''STRUCTIOM ACT. 539 

he saiil : " This bill is quite as infamous, quite as absurd, as the 
bill that the clistini>;uished gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. 
Stevens,] who is Chairman of the Committee on lleconstruction, 
contends for and hangs so tenaciously to. It confers all the pow- 
ers that that bill gives; it confers all the powers that the most 
radical could claim consistently." 

" I shall content myself," said Mr. Eldridgc, " with denouncing 
this measure as most wicked and abominable. It contains all that 
is vicious, all that is mischievous in any and all of the propositions 
which liave come either from the Committee on Reconstruction 
or from any gentleman upon the other side of the House." 

" If you do not take this bill," said Mr. Delano, " although in 
all its parts it docs not suit you, what are you likely to give the 
American people? Nothing. I will not return to my constitu- 
ents admitting that I have failed to try to do something in this 
great trial of the nation. It is not for rebels that I legislate ; it 
is not for the right of those who have sought to destroy this 
Government that I extend mercy; but it is for the liberties, 
rights, and welfare of my country, for all parts of it." 

"If this bill be passed, said Mr. Banks, "in my belief there 
will be no loyal party known and no loyal voice heard in any of 
these States, from Virginia to Texas." 

Many members subsequently presented arguments and opinions 
for and against the bill, in speeches limited to fifteen minutes in 
length. This occupied a session protracted until near midnight. 

On the following morning, February 19th, a vote was taken, 
and the House refused to concur in the amendments of the Senate, 
and asked a Committee of Conference. 

The action of the House having been announced in the Senate, 
that body immediately proceeded to consider a motion made by 
Mr. AVilliams, that they insist on their amendment and agree to 
the conference. The proposition to give the subject into the 
hands of a Committee of Conference was opposed by many Sen- , 
ators, who thought a question of so much importance should be 
deliberated upon in a full Senate. If such a committee were 
appointed, their report could only be adopted or rejected without 
modification or amendment. They would only have the power 
which they possess over a nomination by the President — power to 
reject a nominee without naming another. 

"The result arrived at by the Senate in ;'eference to this. bill," 



540 THE THIETT-J^IJ^TH CONGRESS. 

said ]Mr. Conness, " was after the most mature consideratiou that 
was ever given to any projjosition that came before tliis body, 
resulting in an imanimity, at least on this side of the chamber, 
unparalleled in legislative proceedings — a result hailed by the 
country at large, demanded by the most intelligent and power- 
ful of the American press, alike acceptable to the industrial 
and commercial interests of the country, which suffer from a 
continual disorganization of the country affecting its vital in- 
dustries." 

" The fact that it is a very imjiortant bill," said Mr. Williams, 
only makes it the more necessary, as it seems to me, to adopt the 
usual practice in such cases " — that of appointing a Committee of 
Conference. 

Mr. Sumner favored the appointment of such a committee. 
The Senate had made its best endeavor, the House had refused to 
concur, and now to ask that body to vote upon the question again 
without a Committee of Conference would kill the bill. In such 
a case there could be no hope during the session for any just and 
beneficent measure either of j)rotection or reconstruction. 

Mr. Fessenden had taken no part in the debate upon the bill 
when it M'as on its passage. A majority of his political friends 
having determined that the measure which passed the Senate was 
the best that could be accomplished, he had deemed it his duty 
not to present his individual objections to the bill. "I would 
have very much preferred," said he, " the Military Bill, as it was 
called, pure and simple, without having any thing else upon it, 
and leaving to other legislation, if it was judged expedient, what 
else might be done." 

jNIr. Trumbull had not before said a word in reference to this 
bill. He never regarded the Military Bill as it came from the 
House of Representatives as of the slightest importance. Section 
fourteenth of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill conferred all the pow- 
ers given in the Military Bill. If these had not been used for 
the protection of the loyal peoj^le of the South, would the reitera- 
tion of the statute be to any purpose? Yet Mr. Trumbull 
thought the amendment put upon the bill by the Senate con- 
tained every guarantee that had ever been asked for by any one/ • 
He was unwilling that a great question like this, open in all its 
parts, should be submitted to a Committee of Conference. 

The vote was finally taken, after a prolonged discussion. The 




' Geo E Perme X'^'-'' " 




TTOTT ,TOTT>J nnNfNF, SS 



MILITAB Y BECOJfSTR VCTIOK -A CT. 54I 

Senate insisted on its amendment, and refused to appoint a Com- 
mittee of Conference. 

The bill having gone back to the House of Representatives, 
they resolved by a vote of one hundred and twenty-six to forty- 
six to recede from their disagreement to the amendment of the 
Senate, and to concur in the same with amendments, providing 
that no person excluded from holding office by the recently pro- 
posed Constitutional Amendment should be eligible for member- 
ship in the convention to frame a constitution for any of the 
rebel States, nor should any such person be allowed to vote for 
members of such convention. Another amendment proposed by 
the House was the addition of a section (sixth) to the bill provid- 
ing that until the rebel States should be admitted to representa- 
tion in Congress, any civil governments existing therein should 
be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount author- 
ity of the United States, wdio may at any time abolish, modify, 
control, or supersede them. 

This qualified concurrence on the part of the House having 
been announced in the Senate, that body proceeded immediately 
to consider the question of acquiescence. 

Mr. Sherman said that his only objection to the amendment of 
the House was, that it disfranchised ten or fifteen thousand lead- 
ing rebels from voting at the elections, yet he was willing to 
agree to the amendment. 

Mr. Sumner congratulated Mr. Sherman on the advanced step 
he had taken. " To-morrow," said Mr. Sumner, " I hope to wel- 
come the Senator to some other height." 

Mr. Sherman was unwilling to admit that he had come to Mr. 
Sumner's stand-point. He was willing to accept the bill, although 
it excluded a few thousand rebels from voting, yet "I would 
rather have them all vote," said he, " white and black, under the 
stringent restrictions of this bill, and let the governments of the 
Southern States that are about now to rise upon the permanent 
foundation of universal liberty and universal "equality, stand upon 
the consent of the governed, white and black, former slaves and 
former masters." 

Then followed an extended discussion of the question as to 
whether the Senate should agree to the amendments proposed by 
the House. Mr. Doolittle proposed and advocated an amend- 
ment providing that nothing in the bill should be construed to 



54^ THE TIIIRTY-iriNTH COJfGBESS. 

disfranchise ijersons who have received pardon and amnesty. 
This amendment was rejected— yeas, 8 ; nays, 33. 

The vote was then taken upon the final passage of the bill as 
amended by the House ; it passed the Senate — yeas, 35 ; nays, 7. 

The Bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the 
rebel States," having thus passed both houses of Congress on the 
20th of February, it was immediately submitted to the President 
for his approval. 

On the second of March the President returned the bill to the 
House, in which it originated, with his objections, which were so 
grave that he hoped a statement of them might "have some in- 
fluence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men with 
whom the decision must ultimately rest." 

The Veto Message was immediately read by tlie clerk of the 
House of Representatives. The following extracts present the 
President's principal objections to the measure : 



" The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the 
absolute domination of. military rulers. * * * * 

"It is not denied that the States in question have each of them an actual 
government, with all the povrers, executive, judicial, and legislative which 
properly belong to a free State. They are organized like the other States 
of the Union, and like them they make, administer, and execute the laws 
which concern their domestic affairs. An existing de facto government, ex- 
ercising such functions as these, is itself the law of the State upon all mat- 
ters within its jurisdiction. To pronounce the supreme law-making power 
of an established State illegal is to say that law itself is unlawful. * * * 

"The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any 
purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of 
coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which 
it is known that they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable 
right to exercise their own judgment. 

" I submit to Congress whether this measure is not, in its whole charac- 
ter, scope, and object, without precedent and without authority, in palpable 
conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly destruc- 
tive to those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ances- 
tors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended 
so much treasure. 

***■» + *** 

"The power thus given to the commanding officer over all the people of 
each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the 
place of all law. The law of the States is now the only rule applicable to 
the subjects placed under his control, and that is completely displaced by 
the clause which declares all interference of State authority to be null and 



MILITAR T BECOJfSTB UCTIOJf A CT. 543 

void. lie alono is permitted to determine what are rights of person or prop- 
erty, and he may protect them in -such way as in his discretion may seem 
proper. It places at his free disposal all the lands and goods in liis district, 
and he may distribute them without let or hinderance to whom he pleases. 
Being bound by no State law, and there being no other law to regulate the 
subject, he may make a criminal code of his own; and ho can make it as 
bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of acting 
upon the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises. He is 
bound by no rules of evidence; there is indeed no provision by which he is 
authorized or required to take any evidence at all. Every thing is a crime 
which he chooses to call so, and all persons are condemned whom he pro- 
nounces to be guilty. He is not bound to keep any record or make any 
report of his proceedings. He may arrest his victims wherever he finds 
them, without wai-rant, accusation, or proof of probable cause. If he gives 
them a trial before he inflicts the punishment, he gives it of his grace and 
mercy, not because he is commanded so to do. 

******** 
"Cruel or unusual punishment is not to be inflicted, but who is todecide 
what is cruel and what is unusual? ***** Each officer may 
define cruelty according to his own temper, and if it is not usual, he will 
make it usual. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, the gag, the ball and 
chain, and the almost insupportable forms of torture invented for military 
punishment lie within the range of choice. The sentence of a commission 
is not to be executed without being approved by the commander, if it afl'ects 
life or liberty, and a sentence of death must be approved by the President. 
This applies to cases in which there has been a trial and sentence. I take 
it to be clear, under this bill, that the military commander may condemn to 
death without even the form of a trial by a military commission, so that 
the life of the condemned may depend upon the will of two men instead 
of one. 

"It is plain that the authority here given to the military officer amounts 
to absolute despotism. 

* * * * ** * * 

"I come now to a question which is, if possible, still more important. 
Have we the power to establish and carry into execution a measure like 
this? I answer certainly not, if we derive our authority from the Con- 
stitution, and if we are bound by the limitations which it imposes. This 
proposition is perfectly clear; that no branch of the Federal Government, 
executive, legislative, or judicial, can have any just powers except those 
which it derives through and exercises under the organic law of the Union. 
Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private 
citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. 
This broad principle limits all our function and applies to all subjects. It 
protects not only the citizens of States which are within the Union, but it 
shields every human being who comes or is brought under our jurisdiction. 
We have no right to do in one place more than in another that which the 
Constitution says we shall not do at all. If, therefore, the Southern States 



544 THE THIRTT-XIJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

were in truth out of the Union, wc could not treat their people in a way 
which the fundamental law forbids. * ■•■■ * * * 

"If an insurrection should take place in one of our States against the 
authority of the State government, and end in the overthrowing of those who 
planned it, would they take away the rights of all the people of the counties 
where it was favored by a part or a majority of the population ? Could they 
for such a reason be wholly outlawed and deprived of their representation 
in the Legislature ? I have ahvays contended that the Government of the 
United States was sovereign within its constitutional sphere; that it executed 
its laws like the States themselves, by applying its coercive power directly to 
individuals ; and that it could put down insurrection with the same effect as 
a State and no other. The opposite doctrine is the worst heresy of those 
who advocated secession, and can not be agreed to without admitting that 
heresy to be right. 

'•This is a bill passed by Congress in time of peace. There is not in any 
one of the States brought under its operation either war or insurrection. 
The laws of the States and of the Federal Government are all in undisturbed 
and harmonious operation. The courts. State and Federal, are open and in 
the full exercise of their proper authority. Over every State comprised in 
these five military districts life, liberty, and property are secured by State 
laws and Federal laws, and the national Constitution is every-where enforced 

and every-were obeyed. 

^ -s * * *,* * * 

"Actual war, foreign invasion, domestic insurrection — none of these ap- 
pear, and none of these in fact exist. It is not even recited that any sort 
of war or insurrection is threatened." 

" Upon this question of constitutional law and tlie power of 
Congress/' the President gave quotations from " a recent decision 
of the Supreme Court ex ]iarte Milligan." Having commented 
upon this opinion, the President proceeded with his objections : 

"I need not say to the Representatives of the American people that their 
Constitution forbids the exercise of judicial power in any way but one ; that 
is, by the ordained and established courts. It is equally well known that, in 
all criminal cases, a trial by juiy is made indispensable by the express 
words of that instrument. I will not enlarge on the inestimable value of the 
right thus secured to every freeman, or speak of the danger to public liberty, 
in all parts of the country, which must ensue from a denial of it anywhere, 
or upon any pretense. *■»*** -^ 

"The United States are bound to guaranty to each State a republican 
form of government. Can it be pretended that this obligation is not palpa- 
bly broken if we carry out a measure like this, which wipes away every vestige 
of republican government in ten States, and put the life, property, liberty 
and honor of all the people in each of them under the domination of a 
single person clothed with unlimited authority. 



MILITARY RECOJfSTRUCTIOJf ACT. 545 

''The purpose and object of the bill — the general intent which pervades 
it from beginning to end — is to change the entire structure and character 
of the State governments, and to compel them by force to the adoption of 
organic laws and regulations which they arc unwilling to accept if left to 
themselves. The negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting; the 
vast majority of them have no idea what it means. This bill not only 
thrusts it into tlioir hands, but compels them, as well as the Avhites, to use 
it in a particular way. If they do not form a Constitution with prescribed 
articles in it, and afterward elect a Legislature which will act upon certain 
measures in a prescribed way, neither blacks nor whites can be relieved 
from the slavery which the bill imposes upon them. Without pausing here to 
consider the policy or impolicy of Africanizing the Southern part of our 
territory, I would simply ask the attention of Congress to that manifest, 
well-known, and universally-acknowledged rule of constitutional law which 
declares that the Federal Government has no jurisdiction, authority, or power 
to regulate such subjects for any State. To force the right of suffrage out 
of the hands of the white people and into the hands of the negroes is an 
arbitrary violation of this principle. 

" This bill imposes martial law at once, and its operations will begin so 
soon as the General and his troops can be put in place. The dread alter- 
native between its harsh rule and compliance with the terms of this meas- 
ure is not suspended, nor are the people afforded any time for free delib- 
eration. The bill says to them, Take martial law first, then deliberate. 

* » * « * »»•»«* 

"The bill also denies the legality of the governments of ten of the States 
which participated in the ratification of the amendment to the Federal Con- 
stitution abolishing slavery forever within the jurisdiction of the United 
States, and practically excludes them from the Union. * * ■■■■ 

" That the measure proposed by this bill does violate the Constitution in 
the particulars mentioned, and in many other ways which I forbear to enu- 
merate is too clear to admit of the least doubt. 

« s s- * «■ » « » s » 

"I am thoroughly convinced that any settlement, or compromise, or plan 
of action which is inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution, will 
not only be unavailing, but mischievous ; that it will but multiply the 
present evils instead of removing them. The Constitution, in its whole 
integrity and vigor, throughout the length and breadth of the land, is the 
best of all compromises. Besides, our duty does not, in my judgment, leave 
us a choice between that and any other. I believe that it contains the rem- 
edy that is so much needed, and that if the coordinate branches of the Gov- 
ernment would unite upon its provisions, they would be foimd broad enough 
and strong enough to sustain, in time of peace, the nation which they bore 
safely through the ordeal of a protracted civil war. Among the most sacred 
guarantees of that instrument are those which declare that 'each State 
shall have at least one Representative,' and that 'no State, without its 
consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.' Each 
house is made the 'judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of 
35 



546 THE THIETY-KIJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

its own members,' and may, 'with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a 
member.' " 

"And is it not far better that the work of restoration should be accom- 
plished by simple compliance with the plain requirements of the Constitu- 
tion, than by a recourse to measures which, in effect, destroy the States, 
and threaten the subversion of the General Government ? All that is neces- 
sary to settle this simple but important question, without further agitation 
or delay, is a willingness, on the part of all, to sustain the Constitution, and 
carry its provisions into practical operation. If to-morrow either branch of 
Congress would declare that, upon the presentation of their credentials, 
members constitutionally elected, and loyal to the General Government, 
would be admitted to seats in Congress, while all others would be excluded, 
and their places remain vacant until the selection by the people of loyal 
and qualified persons; and if, at the same time, assurance were given that 
this policy would be continued until all the States were represented in Con- 
gress, it would send a thrill of joy throughout the entire land, as indicating 
the inauguration of a system which must speedily bring tranquillity \m the 
public mind. 

"While we are legislating upon subjects Avhich are of great importance 

to the whole people, and which must affect all parts of the country, not only 

during the life of the present generation, but for ages to come, we should 

remember that all men are entitled at least to a hearing in the councils 

which decide upon the destiny of themselves and their children. At present 

ten States are denied representation, and when the Fortieth Congress 

assembles, on the fourth day of the present month, sixteen States will be 

without a voice in the House of Representatives. This grave fact, with the 

important questions before us, should induce us to pause in a course of 

legislation, which, looking solely to the attainment of political ends, fails to 

consider the rights it transgresses, the law which it violates, or the institutions 

which it imperils. 

"ANDREW JOHNSON." 



After the reading of the message, the question came up, " Shall 
the bill pass, the objections of the President to the contrary not- 
withstanding?" 

IVIr. Eldridge declared that it would be the duty of the minor- 
ity, if it were within their physical power, to defeat the bill. 
"But we are conscious," said he, "that no effort of ours can 
prevent its passage, and the consequent accomplishment of a 
dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow and abandonment 
of our constitution of government. We can only, in the name 
of the Constitution, in the name of the rejjublic, in the name of 
all \vc hold dear on earth, earnestly, solemnly protest against 
this action of this Cong-ress." 



MILITARY RECOKSTRVCTIOK ACT. 547 

Mr. LeBlond said that " the passage of this bill would be the 
death-knell of republican liberty upon this continent." He de- 
clared his willingness, if a sufficient number on his side of the 
House would stand by him, to resist to the utmost extremity of • 
physical exhaustion the passage of this bill, which would " strike 
a death-blow to this Government." 

Mr. Stevens would not be discourteous to those who were op- 
posed to this bill : " I am aware," said he, " of the melancholy 
feelings with whicli they are approaching this funeral of the 
nation." He was unwilling, however, to lose the opportunity 
to pass the bill at once, and send it to the Senate, that the 
House might proceed to other matters. 

The vote was taken, and the House passed the bill over the 
President's veto — yeas, 135; nays, 48. The announcement of 
this result was followed by great applause on the floor and in 
the galleries. 

The immense numbers that had assembled in the galleries of 
the House to witness these proceedings went immediately to the 
other end of the Capitol to see the reception which the Veto 
Message would receive in the Senate. The consideration of the 
subject, however, was deferred until the evening session. 

The Veto Message having been read in the Senate by the Sec- 
retary, the pending question at once became whether the bill 
should pass notwithstanding the objections of the President? 

Mr. Johnson advocated the passage of the bill over the veto. 
" It contains," said he, speaking of the President's message, " some 
legal propositions which are unsound, and many errors of reason- 
ing. I lament the course he has thought it his duty to pursue, 
because I see that it may result in continued turmoil and peril, 
not only to the South, but to the entire country. I see before 
me a distressed, a desolated country, and in the measure before 
you I think I see the means through which it may be rescued 
and restored erelong to prosperity and a healthful condition, and 
the free institutions of our country preserved."* 

In reply to a charge of inconsistency brought against him by 
Mr. Buckalew, Mr. Johnson said : " Consistency in a public man 
can never properly be esteemed a virtue when he becomes satis- 
fied that it will operate to the prejudice of his country. The 
pride of opinion, which more or less belongs to us all, becomes, 
in my judgment, in a public man, a crime when it is indulged 



54S THE TEIRTY-NIKTH COJ^GBESS. 

at the sacrifice or hazard of the public safety." He urged upon 
the people of the South their acceptance of the terms proposed 
br Congress. In view of the probability these overtures should 
be rejected, harsher measures would be resorted to. 

]Mr. Saulsbury expressed his admiration for the wisdom of the 
President in "vetoing the most iniquitous bill that ever was 
presented to the Federal Congress." "I hope/' said he, "that 
there may be no man within the limits of these ten States who 
will participate in his own disgrace, degradation, and ruin: let 
them maintain their honor. If there be wrath in the vials of 
the Almighty, if there be arrows of vengeance in his quiver, such 
iniquity and injustice can not finally prove successful." 

Mr. Hendricks disagreed with the Senator from Delaware that 
the people of the South, at once and without consideration, must 
turn their backs upon the proposition now made them in order 
to maintain their honor. He hoped they would bring to the 
consideration of the subject the coolest judgment and the highest 
patriotism. He was still opposed to the bill; he approved of 
the President's veto. His judgment against the measure had 
been "fortified and strengthened by that able document." 

The discussion of the question was continued by Messrs. Buck- 
alew, Dixon, and Davis, who spoke against the bill. The friends 
of the measure were content to let the subject go without a fur- 
ther word from them, save the solemn and final declaration of 
their votes. 

The question being taken, the bill was passed over the veto 
by a vote of almost four-fifths. Thirty-eight Senators voted for 
the bill in its final passage, and but ten were found willing to 
stand by the President and his veto. 

The bill whose progress through Congress has thus been traced 
became a law of the land in the following form: 

"An Act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States 

''Whereas, no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or 
property now exists in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and 
Arkansas ; and whereas it is necessary that peace and good order should be 
enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be 
legally established: therefore, 

" jBe it enacted hy the Senate and House of Bcpresentatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That said rebel States shall be 
divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of 



MILITAB Y BECOJ^STR UCTIOJT A CT. 6Jf9 

the United States, as hereinafter prescribed; and for that purpose Virgina 
shall constitute the first district, North Carolina and South Carolina the 
second district, Georgia. Alabama, and Florida the third district, Mississippi 
and Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district. 

"Seg. 2. xhxd be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the Pres- 
ident to assign to the command of each of said districts an officer of the 
army not below the rank of brigadier general, and to detail a sufficient 
military force to enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his 
authority within the district to which he is assigned. 

"Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of each officer 
assigned, as aforesaid, to protect all persons in their, rights of person and 
property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or 
cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and _ 
to this end he may allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to 
try offenders, or when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of 
offenders he shall have power to organize military commissions or tribunals 
for that purpose, and all interference, under color of State authority, with 
the exercise of military authority uuder this act shall be null and void. 

"Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That all persons put under military 
arrest by virtue of this act shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no 
cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted, and no sentence of any mil- 
itary commission or tribunal hereby authorized, affecting the life or liberty 
of any person, shall be executed until it is approved by the officer in com- 
mand of the district; and the laws and regulations for the government of the 
army shall not be aiiected by this act, except in so far as they conflict with 
its provisions : Provided, That no sentence of death under the provisions of 
this act shall be carried into effect without the approval of the President. 

" Sec. 5. And be it further enacted. That when the people of any one of said 
rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity 
with the Constitution" of the United States in all respects, framed by a con- 
vention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State twenty-one 
years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who 
have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such 
election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion 
or for felony at common law, and when such constitution shall provide that 
the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the quali- 
fications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such Constitution 
shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratifi- 
cation who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when such constitution 
shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and 
Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of 
its Legislature elected under said constitution, shall have adopted the amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States, pro^wsed by the Thirty-ninth 
Congress, and known as article fourteen, and when -said article shall have 
become a part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be 
declared entitled to representation in Congress, and Senators and Represent- 
atives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, 
and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative 



550 THE TEIETr-J^I^'TH COJVGBESS. 

in said State : Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of hold- 
in"- office by said proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a 
constitution for any of said rebel States, nor shall any such person vote for 
members of such convention. 

"Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That, until the people of said rebel States 
shall be by law admitted to representation in the Congress of the United 
States, any civil government which may exist therein shall be deemed pro- 
visional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the 
United States at any time to abolish, modify, control, or supersede the same; 
and in all elections to» any office under such provisional governments all per- 
sons shall be entitled to vote, and none others, who are entitled to vote under 
the provisions of the fifth section of this act; and no person shall be eligible 
to any office under such provisional governments who would be disqualified 
from holding office under the provisions of the third article of said Constitu- 
tional Amendment." 

The friends of this measure were dissatisfied with it on the 
ground of its incompleteness in not containing provisions for car- 
rying it into effect in accordance with the purpose of its framers. 
This record would be incomplete without a statement of what 
was done to perfect the measure in the succeeding Congress. 
The Fortieth Congress, meeting on the 4th of March, immedi- 
ately upon the close of its predecessor, proceeded without delay to 
perfect and pass over the President's veto a bill supplementary 
to the act to provide for the more efficient government of the 
rebel States. By this act it was provided that the commanding 
general of each district should cause a registration to be made of 
the male citizens twenty-one years of age in his district, qualified 
to vote under the former act. In order to be registered as a 
voter under this act, a person is required to swear that he has 
not been disfranchised for participation in any rebellion or civil 
war against the United States, nor for felony ; that he has never 
been a member of any State Legislature, nor held any executive 
or judicial office in any State and afterward engaged in insurrec- 
tion or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or com- 
fort to the enemies thereof; that he has never taken an oath as 
a member of Congress of the United States, or as a member of 
any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any 
State, to support the Constitution of the United States, and after- 
ward engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United 
States, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, and that 



MILITARY BECOJfSTRUCTIOJ^ ACT. 551 

he will faithfully support the Constitution and obey the laws of 
the United States, and encourage others to do so. 

Persons thus qualified shall vote at elections held for the pur- 
pose of selecting delegates to the conventions for framing consti- 
tutions for the States. 

A majority of voters so qualified shall determine whether con- 
stitutional conventions shall be held in the several States, and 
shall vote for delegates who shall be as numerous as the members 
of the most numerous branch of the Legislature of such State in 
the year 1860. This convention having framed a constitution, 
it shall be submitted to the people, and if ratified by a majority 
of the qualified voters, it shall be forthwith transmitted to Con-* 
gress. If this constitution is satisfactory to Congress, and found 
to be in accordance with the provisions of the act of which this 
is supplementary, the State shall be declared entitled to jcpre- 
sentation. All elections are reqnired to be by ballot, and all 
ofificers acting under the provisions of this act are required to 
take the test oath. 



55^ THE THIRTT-J^IJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

OTHER IMPORTANT ACTS, 

Equalizixo Bounties — The Army — The DEPAETMEifT of Education — South- 
■ ERN Homesteads — The Bankrupt Law — The Tariff — Reduction of Taxes 

— Contracting the Currency — Issue of Three Per Cents. — Nebraska 

AND Colorado — Tenure of Office. 

THE great national measures, whose progress through Con- 
gress has been given in detail, occupied the attention of 
that body coatinuously, from the first days of its existence 
to the closing hours of its last session. No day passed which 
was not rendered important by something said or done upon 
questions which concern not only the nation, but humanity, and 
which are of interest not only for the present, but for all time 
to come. While these great measures were passing through Con- 
gress, making it memorable, and absorbing the public attention, 
there was a constant undercurrent of patient, laborious legislation 
upon subjects of less interest to the public, but of real impor- 
tance to the country. 

One of the first duties devolving upon the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress-was the great work of disbanding the vast volupteer army 
which had suppressed the rebellion, saved the country, and earned 
the undying gratitude of the nation. The soldiers of the repub- 
lic were to be paid for their distinguished services, their reason- 
able demands for equalization of bounty were to be met, and a 
suitable number retained in the service for the necessities of the 
nation on a " peace footing." Near the close of the first session, 
a bill to equalize soldiers' bounties, introduced by Mr. Schenck of 
Ohio, passed the House by a nearly unanimous vote, but was lost 
in the Senate. Subsequently, the Senate attached to the Civil 
Appropriation Bill a provision for paying additional bounty, differ- 
ing materially from the bill which passed the House. This being 
in such shape that it could not be easily detached, became a law. 



IMPORTAJ^T ACTS. 553 

During the first session, Congi'ess passed the "Act to increase 
and fix the military peace establishment of the United States." 
By this law the regular army consists of five regiments of artil- 
lery, ten regiments of cavalry, and forty-five regiments of in- 
fantry. It acknowledged the services and claims of the volunteer 
officers and men who served in the recent war by providing that 
a large proportion of the commissions in the new service should 
be conferred upon them. At the same time the standard of at- 
tainment and talent was not lowered, since the law provided for 
such an examination as must exclude the unqualified and relieve 
the army from some who unworthily held commissions. 

The important fact that general intelligence is one of the 
greatest safeguards of the nation was fully recognized by the 
Thirty-ninth Congress. Of this they gave permanent proof in 
establishing a Bureau of Education. Early in the first session, 
Mr. Donnelly, of Minnesota, introduced a resolution instructing 
the joint Committee on Reconstruction to inquire into the expe- 
diency of establishing a National Bureau of Education " to enforce 
education, without regard to color." The necessity for such a 
measure was set forth in the preamble to arise from the fiict that 
" republican institutions can find permanent safety only upon the 
basis of the universal intelligence of the people," and that "the 
great disasters which have afflicted the nation and desolated one- 
half its territory are traceable in a great degree to the absence 
of common schools and general education among the people of 
lately rebellious States." This resolution passed the House by a 
large majority. 

This subject was subsequently referred to an able select com- 
mittee, of which Mr. Garfield was chairman. On the 5th of 
June he reported a bill to establish a Department of Education. 
The measure was supported by Messrs. Donnelly, Garfield, Banks, 
and Boutwell, and opposed by Messrs. Pike, Rogers, and Ran- 
dall. The bill passed the House on the 19th of June and went 
to the Senate, where it was referred to the Committee on the 
Judiciary. The bill went over, in the press of business, to the 
second session, and passed the Senate on the 28th of February, 
1867. 

A measm-e indirectly connected with the subject of reconstruc- 
tion, destined to have an important influence upon the future of 
Southern society, Avas introduced by Mr. Julian on the 7th of 



654 THE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GBESS. 

February, 1866. This was a bill for the disposal of the public 
lands for homesteads to actual settlers, without distinction of 
color in the States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, 
and Florida, providing that the quantity of land selected by any 
one person should be eighty acres, and not one hundred and sixty 
acres, as provided in the Homestead Bill of 1862. The necessity 
of this measure, as shown by Mr. Julian, arose from the abolition 
of slavery and the demands of free labor. It was designed to cut 
off land speculation in the Southern country. " Without some 
provision of this kind." said Mr. Julian, " rebel speculators now 
hovering over the whole of that region, and hunting up the best 
portion of it, and the holders of Agricultural College scrip can 
come down upon it at one fell swoop and cheat the actual settler, 
whether white or black, out of his rights, or even the possibility 
of a home in that region, driving the whole of them to some 
of our Western Territories or to starvation itself." 

The bill was finally passed in the House on the 28th of Febru- 
ary, 1867, with an amendment excluding from the benefit of the 
act persons who have borne arms against the United States, or 
given aid and comfort to its enemies. 

A work of legislation of much importance, destined to have 
beneficent effect upon the business interests of the country, was 
the passage of the Bankrupt Law, which was finally enacted near 
the close of the Thirty-ninth Congress. The Bankrupt Bill 
passed the House of Representatives as early as May, 1866, but 
the Senate objecting to the entire principle of the bill, it was 
postponed till December. On the reassembling of Congress for 
the second session, the consideration of the Bankrupt Bill was 
resumed, and after much opposition in the Senate, it finally re- 
ceived the support of a decisive majority in that body of all 
shades of politics. The perfection and final passage of this 
measure were among the last acts of the Thirty-ninth Congress. 

The Bankrupt Law of 1800 was enacted in the interest of 
creditors, and that of 1841 for the benefit of debtors. The law 
of 1867 was framed with a view to protect the interests of both 
parties. The passage of this important law is due mainly to the 
energy and perseverance of Thomas A. Jenckes, of Ehode Island. 

The subject of the tariff occupied, first and last, a considerable 
share of the time and attention of the Thirty-ninth Congress. 
In the early part of the first session numerous petitions poured 



IMPORTAJfT ACTS. 555 

in upon Congress in favor of a protective tariff. In June and 
July the subject was discussed, and a Tariff Bill passed the 
House by a vote of ninety-four to fifty-three. The friends of 
protection said of this bill that though not perfect, it was "a 
decided improvement on the tariff in existence." The bill, on 
its introduction to the Senate was postponed till December. 

There was soon after introduced into the House a revised 
Tariff Bill, entitled a bill " to protect the revenue." Gradually 
many of the features which the advocates of protection regarded 
as most important, were eliminated from the bill. This was 
passed in the Senate on the 24th of July, with amendments in 
which the House was unwilling to concur. A Committee of 
Conference was appointed, who made a report which was accepted 
by both Houses of Congress. The bill greatly modified and 
"enfeebled" as its original friends regarded it, finally passed on 
the day before the close of the first session. 

The subject of diminishing taxation, as far as consistent with 
the obligations of the nation to its creditors, early enlisted and 
occupied the attention of the Thirty-ninth Congress. The prin- 
ciple upon which Congress acted was announced by the distin- 
guished chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. 
Morrill, to be " The abolition or speedy reduction of all taxes 
which tend to chech development, and the retention of all those 
which like the i7icom& tax fall chiefly on realized wealth,^' 

In the midst of many conflicting interests, and in the face of 
remonstrances, protests, and prayers from every trade and profes- 
sion. Congress proceeded to work put the difficult question. As 
a result of most patient and careful investigation. Congress found 
itself able to reduce to the extent of one hundred millions of 
dollars per annum, the taxation resting upon the shoulders of the 
American people. 

On the subject of finance and the national currency great di- 
versity of opinion existed among leading members of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress. Unanimity prevailed upon the opinion that the 
currency should sooner or later be subjected to suitable contrac- 
tion, but there was diversity of sentiment as to the ways and 
means by which this result should be achieved without involving 
the country in commercial and financial disaster. 

"I am for specie payments," remarked Mr. Stevens, on one 
occasion, "when we can arrive at them without crushing the 



556 THE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GEESS. 

community to death. I am for arriving at specie payments, and 
still allowing the business of the country to go on and thrive, 
and the people engaged in business to pay the taxes which you 
impose on them. I say that there is not a man in the community 
who would not as soon have one dollar in greenbacks as one dol- 
lar in gold. No one expects to be paid in gold until a general 
resumption by the banks of specie payment ; nobody now knows 
any other currency than greenbacks, and, therefore, I am in favor 
of keeping that currency. In my judgment, we have not more 
circulation now than the expanded business of the country re- 
quires. 

"This war has given an immense impulse to every thing. 
Whence this precipitation ? "VVe have barely got out of the war 
against the rebels before we have a w^ar made upon the business 
community, upon the manufacturing interests, and upon all 
others." 

" When this great Kepublican party was made up," said Mr. 
Wentworth, " we, who were originally Democrats, took up a cross, 
and it was a great cross. [Laughter.] We were told that if we 
went into that thing, we should have to lay down at the feet of 
the irresponsible paper-money men. Now, I want to know of 
the gentleman distinctly, whether, if he could, he would resume 
specie payments to-morrow?" 

" If," replied Mr. Stevens, " I could have specie payment to- 
morrow, without deranging the business of the country, I would. 
If it would derange the business of the country to return to 
specie payment at once, I would postpone it a little. I voted for 
the Legal-tender Bill ; and I am glad I did so, for the country 
would not have survived without it." 

" AVould you compromise on a year ? " asked Mr. Wentworth. 
"No, sir; nor on two years," replied Mr. Stevens. "England 
did not resume specie payment the year after the wars with 
France. The Bank of England issued paper money,- but the 
Government had £14,000,000 in the stock of that bank to give 
it security, and the Government prevented it from resuming 
specie payment until it thought it best. Now, when that great 
war of twenty-five years was over, did England attempt, in 1814 
and 1815, to return to specie payment? They had afloat but 
£20,000,000, or §100,000,000, and they began with their one- 
pound notes. In a few years they took their two-pound notes; 



IMPORTAKT ACTS. 557 

afterward they took tlicir five-pouncl notes. But tlicy never re- 
sumed full specie payment until the latter part of the year 1822. 
Does my friend from Illinois expect me to be wiser than the 
great men of England ? " 

"Docs my friend from Pennsylvania deny," asked Mr. Gar- 
field, "that in 1819 the laAV for resuming specie payment was 
passed, to go into effect gradually at first, and completely in 
1823, and that the full resumption of specie payment actually 
took place early in the Spring of 1821 — only about a year and 
three-quarters from the passage of the law ? " 

"Yes," answered Mr. Stevens, "except in very large sums. 
The law authorized them to go on until the first of January, 
1823." 

"But they resumed in 1821, about a year and three-quarters 
earlier," said Mr. Garfield. 

" About a year earlier," said Mr. Stevens. " But the law did 
not pass until four years after the war. Do gentlemen here ex- 
pect, when England, with almost all the commerce of the world 
at her command, was unable to resume specie payments for eight 
years after the conclusion of her wars, and then did it by such 
gradual legislation that there should be no shock to the business 
of the country — do gentlemen expect that we are to put it into 
the power of one man to compel the resumption of specie pay- 
ments in a single year?" 

" I want to know," said Mr. Wentworth, " if the power, and 
the patronage, and the influence of the great Republican party, 
so called, is to be used to deprive us of our natural standard 
of value. Now, I wish, while we go together, to be perfectly 
honest. Nobody respects the talents of my friend from Pennsyl- 
vania [Mr. Stevens] more than I do. He knows more than all 
of us put together. [Laughter.] I want him to state to the 
House, fairly and candidly, whether, if we follow him, he will 
lead us to specie payment ; or whether, if he could, he would." 

"I will say to my friend," replied Mr. Stevens, "that in this 
case I do not act as a member of the Republican party." 

" I have followed the gentlemen," said INIr. Wentworth, " be- 
cause I supposed him to be a Republican leader." 

"If I believed," said Mr. Stevens, "that we could resume 
specie payments in a month without crushing the interests of 
the country, without injuring the laborer, without breaking 



538 THE THIRTY-mKTR COMGRESS. 

down the manuflicturer, without oppressing the people, without 
decrcasin"- tlie revenues of the Government; if I had the power, 
I would order every bank in the country. State and national, 
and the Government also, to resume specie payment." 

" Suppose McCulloch could do that," said Mr. Wentworth, 
" and give all our boys their money at par." 

" If he could do it, I would give him great credit," said Mr. 
Stevens. 

" I believe he can," said Mr. Wentworth. 

" My friend is large," said Mr. Stevens, " and has faith like 
two grains of mustard-seed." 

Plans were devised, and ultimately carried through Congress, 
by which the great volume of paper currency should be gradually 
reduced at a certain fixed rate, so that the people might know 
how to calculate the future, and be enabled to provide against a 
commercial crash. 

The first measure designed to accomplish this result was popu- 
larly called the Loan Bill, which was amendatory of an act " to 
provide ways and means to support the Government.'' When 
first considered, in March, 1866, it was defeated in the House. 
It was soon after brouglit up again in a modified form, and 
passed both the House and Senate by large majorities. The act 
provided that the Secretary of the Treasury might receive treas- 
ury notes, or " other obligations issued under any act of Con- 
gress," in exchange for bonds. The contraction of the currency 
was restricted and limited by the provision that not more than 
ten millions of dollars might be retired and canceled within six 
months from the passage of the act, and thereafter not more than 
four millions of dollars in any one month. 

A financial problem of great importance presented itself for 
solution in the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress. A 
large amount of compound-interest notes, weighed down with 
accrued interest, had ceased to float as currency, and lay in the 
vaults of the banks and the coffers of capitalists, awaiting re- 
demption. The question arose as to how they should be re- 
deemed, and the nation saved the payment of the immense 
amounts of interest which must accumulate in course of time. 
The House of Representatives proposed to pass an act author- 
izing and directing the Secretary of the Treasury to issue legal- 



IMFOBTAKT ACTS. 559 

tender notes, without interest, not exceeding $100,000,000, in 
place of the compound-interest bearing notes. 

To this proposition the Senate M'oukI not accede, and passed a 
substitute which the House would not accept. A Committee of 
Conference reported a modification of the Senate's substitute, 
which finally became a law, providing that, for the purpose of 
redeeming and retiring compound-interest notes, the Secretary of 
the Treasury should issue temporary loan certificates, to the 
amount of §50,000,000, at a rate of interest not exceeding three 
per cent, per annum. 

While the greater share of the attention of the Thirty-ninth 
Congress was occupied with efforts to reconstruct the eleven 
States which had forfeited their rights by rebellion, the Terri- 
tories of Colorado and Nebraska applied for admission to the- 
Union. Congress voted to admit both, but the President ob- 
structed their entrance with his vetoes. Congress, on reconsid- 
eration, admitted Nebraska, the objections of the President to 
the contrary notwithstanding. Colorado was not so fortunate, 
since her people had been so unwise as to prejudice their cause 
by restricting the enjoyment of political rights by ingrafting the 
word "white" into their fundamental law. By this mistake 
they forfeited the favor of the " Radicals," who refused to cham- 
pion their cause against the President. Incidental to this. Con- 
gress ordained that political rights should not be restricted in 
the Territories on account of race or color. 

The manifest evils of unrestricted Executive patronage — the 
bane of American politics — early enlisted the efforts of the 
Thirty-ninth Congress to provide a remedy. A bill to regulate 
appointments to and removals from office was introduced by Mr. 
Henderson into the Senate near the close of the first session, and 
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, but never saw the 
light as an act of Congress. 

The President's power of removal and appointment having 
been unsparingly used during the recess of Congress, the coun- 
try became convinced that a remedy should be applied which 
would be effectual for time to come. On the first day of the 
second session, Mr. Williams brought before the Senate a bill 
to " regulate the tenure of ofiices,''^which was subsequently re- 
ferred to the joint Committee on Retrenchment. On the 10th 
of December Mr. Edmunds, chairman of this committee, reported 



5G0 THE THIRTY-JflJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

tlie bill to the Senate, with amendments. In bringing forward 
the measure, Mr. Edmunds asserted that they Avere acting in no 
spirit of hostility to any party or administration whatever, but 
for " the true republican interest of the country under all ad- 
ministrations, and under the domination of all parties in the 
growth before the nation in the future." After grave* considera- 
tion and protracted discussion in both houses of Congress, the 
bill was passed near the close of the session. On the 2d of 
March the bill encountered the veto of the President, who saw 
in the measure serious interference with the ability of the Ex- 
ecutive to keep his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the 
Constitution of the United States. The bill was immediately 
passed over the veto without debate. 

The act thus j)assed provides that officers appointed by and 
with the advice and consent of the Senate shall hold their offices 
until their successors are in like manner apjDointed and qualified. 
Members of the Cabinet hold their offices during the term of 
the President by whom they are aj)pointed, and for one month 
thereafter, subject to removal by consent of the Senate. 



THE PEESIDEJ^T AJfD COJfGBESS. 561 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS. 

The President's treatment of the South — First Annual Message — Mr. 
Sujiner's Criticism — The President tritjsiphant — He damages his Cause 
— Humor op Mr. Stevens — Vetoes overridden — The Question submitted 
to the People — Their Verdict — Summary of Vetoes — Impeachment — 
Charges by Mr. Ashley — Report of the Committee. 

THE Thirty-ninth Congress is remarkable for having run 
its entire career with the constant opposition of the Exec- 
utive obstructing its progress. In all representative gov- 
ernments, a contest between the executive and the legislative 
branches of the government has sooner or later arisen, which 
has invariably ended in the defeat of the former. The hopeless- 
ness of the contest on the part of the executive, and the perti- 
nacity with which it has been waged, have given it a mock- 
heroic character. 

During the months which intervened between the death of 
Abraham Lincoln and the assembling of Congress, Andrew John- 
son had ample time to preoccupy the field and intrench himself 
against what he termed a coordinate branch "hanging on the 
verge of the Government." 

In June, 1865, delegates from the South were first admitted 
to private interviews with the President. On the 17th of June 
he issued his proclamation providing for the restoration of civil 
government in Georgia and Alabama, in which he excludes 
negroes from the category of loyal citizens entitled to vote. The 
President soon after proceeded to appoint provisional governors 
for the Southern States — a step which was viewed with joy by 
the late rebels, and sorrow by the Union men of the North. 
The character of these appointments may be seen in a sentiment 
36 



062 THE THIRTY-J^IKTH COJ^GBESS: 

uttered by Governor Perry soon after bis elevation to office: 
*' Tbere is not now in the Southern States," said lie, " any one 
who feels more bitterly the humiliation and degradation of going 
back into the Union than I do." Governor Perry saved him- 
self from dismissal by assuring the people that the death of Mr. 
Lincoln was no loss to the South, while he had every hoj^e that 
j\Ir. Johnson, an old slaveholding Democrat, would be an ad- 
vantage. 

In Alabama, under the provisional government established by 
Mr. Johnson, the convention jjrohibited negroes from testifying 
in the coiu"ts. Rebels throughout the South at once began to 
make their arrangements for taking part in the government. In 
November, Governor Perry made a public demand that when 
Congress met the Clerk of the House should place on the roll 
the names of Representatives from the rebel States. 

When South Carolina hesitated to adopt the Constitutional 
Amendment abolishing slavery, President Johnson assured the 
Governor that the clause giving Congress the power to enforce it 
by appropriate legislation really limited congressional control 
over* the negro question. After this assurance. South Carolina 
accepted the Constitutional Amendment. 

In August and September, 1865, Democratic conventions in- 
dorsed the President's policy, and Democratic papers began to 
praise him. Rej)ublicans were unwilling to believe that they 
had been deserted, and hoped that after the assembling of Con- 
gress all diiferences would disappear. 

The message of the President, read at the oi^ening of the 
Thirty-ninth Congress, placed him in direct opposition to the 
leaders of the Republican party, and at variance with his own 
policy. "A concession of the elective franchise," said he, "to 
the freedmen, by act of the President of the United States, must 
have been extended to all colored men, wherever found, and must 
have established a change of suffrage in the Northern, Middle, 
and Western States, not less than in the Southern and South- 
western." 

Every one could see that the President possessed as much 
power to admit the black man to the right of suffrage in the 
rebel States as to appoint provisional governors over them. 

While Congress was in session, and actually emjjloyed in leg- 
islating for the restoration of the rebel States, Mr. Johnson sub- 



THE PRESIDE^fT AjYD COJ^GRESS. 5GS 

stantially declared that Congress had no control over the subject, 
by removing the provisional governor of Alabama, and handing 
the State Government over to the officers elected })y the people. 

The Senate having requested information from the President 
as to the condition of the rebel States, the President, on the 20th 
of December, sent in a message which Mr. Sumner characterized 
as an attempt to "whitewash" the unhappy condition of the 
rebel States. The message of the President was accompanied by 
reports from General Grant and General Schurz, in which Con- 
gress found evidence that the late rebels had little sense of na- 
tional obligation, and were chiefly anxious to regain political 
power, and compensate themselves for the loss of slavery by 
keeping the negroes in abject servitude. 

The passage of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, by a large ma- 
jority in Congress, and its veto by the President, presents the 
next phase in the contest. To Pepublicans the most alarming- 
feature in the Veto Message was the evidence it gave that the 
President was ready at once to give to traitors who had fought 
fiercely for four years to destroy the Union an equal voice with 
loyal men in determining the terms of its reconstruction. 

In this instance the President prevailed. The bill failed to 
pass over the veto, from the fact that six Senators — Dixon, Doo- 
little, Morgan, Norton, Stewart, and Van Winkle — who had 
voted for the bill, now sided with the President. This was the 
first and last triumph of the President. 

Two days after, on the 2 2d of February, the President greatly 
damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Represent- 
ative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of 
the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The 
peoj)le were mortified that the Executive of the nation should 
have committed so serious an indiscretion. 

The incident received notice in Congress in a humorous speech 
of Thaddeus Stevens, who declared that the alleged speech could 
never have been delivered ; that it was " a part of the cunning 
contrivance of the copperhead party, who have been persecuting 
our President;" that it was "one of the grandest hoaxes ever 
perpetrated." 

Congress, now aware that it must achieve its greatest works of 
legislation over the obstructing veto of the President, moved for- 
ward with caution and deliberation. Every measure was well 



564 TI^E THIRTr-JflJVTH COJ^GRESS. 

-weio-lied and carefully matured, since, in order to win its way to 
the favor of a triumphant majority in Congress and the country, 
it must be as free as possible from all objectionable features. 

Impartial suffrage, as provided in the District of Columbia Suf- 
frage Bill, being a subject upon which the people had not yet 
spoken, the Senate determined that it would be better not to risk 
the uncertainty of passing the measure over the inevitable veto 
until the people should have an opportunity of speaking at the 
ballot-box. 

The President applied his veto to the Civil Rights Bill and 
the second Freedmen's Bureau Bill, but a majority of more than 
the requisite two-thirds placed these measures among the laws of 
the land. In the House of Representatives, ]\Ir. Raymond was 
the only Republican member who voted to sustain the veto of 
the Civil Rights Bill. The temptation to be friends of the Pres- 
ident, in order to aid him in the distribution of patronage, was 
very great with members of Congress, and the wonder is that so 
many were able to reject it all, and adhere to principles against 
which the Executive larought to bear all his power of opposition. 

On the adjournment of Congress in July, at the close of the 
first session, the contest was still continued, though in another 
arena. Members of Congress went to their several districts, sul)- 
raitted their doings to their constituents, and took counsel of the 
people. The President also traversed the States from the Atlan- 
tic to the Mississippi. He made numerous speeches, and endeav- 
ored to popularize his policy. 

The people gave their verdict at the ballot-box in favor of 
Congress. The reelection .of Congress was the rejection of the 
President. The ruin of the President's fortunes was shared by 
his followers. No gentleman ever entered the House of Repre- 
sentatives with more edat than that with which Mr. Raymond 
took his sea"t as a member of the Thirty-ninth Congress, but his 
constituents did not see proper to elect him for a second term. 
Delano and Stillwell, of the West, were left at home. Cowan, 
in the Senate, elected six years before as a Republican, was super- 
seded, and Doolittle Avas instructed by his Legislature to resign. 

The message of the President at the opening of the second 
session displayed no disposition to yield to the people or to Con- 
gress. He declared to a State delegation that waited on him that 
he was too old to learn. 



THE PRESIDEJVT AKB COJ^GRESS. 565 

One of the first acts of Congress after reassembling was to 
accept the sanction of the people for impartial suffrage, and pass 
the District Suffrage Bill over the President's veto. The Presi- 
dent deemed it due to his consistency to return bills, with his 
" objections thereto in writing," to the very last. Among the last 
doings of the Thirty-ninth Congress was the passage of the Tenure- 
of-office Bill and the Military Reconstruction Bill over vetoes. 
In humiliating contrast with the circumstances one year before, 
when the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill prevailed, the veto 
of the Military Reconstruction Bill had but ten supporters in the 
Senate. 

The following is a complete list of the bills vetoed by the 
President during the Thirty-ninth Congress, and of the bills 
which were passed over the veto, and those which became law's 
without the President's signature : 

First Sessiox. — To enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau; vetoed 
February 19, 1866. 

To protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish 
tlie means of their vindication ; vetoed; and passed, April 9, 1866, over veto. 

For the admission of the State of Colorado into the Union; vetoed May, 
1866. 

To enable the Montana and New York Iron Mining and ]Manuf\icturiug 
Company to purchase a certain amount of the public lands not now in mar- 
ket; vetoed June, 1866. 

To continue in force and to amend an act entitled "an act to establish a 
bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees, and for other purposes;" 
vetoed; passed, July 16, 1866, over veto. 

For the admission of the State of Nebraska into the Union; not signed; 
failed through the adjournment of Congress. 

Second Session. — To regulate the elective franchise in the District of Co- 
lumbia; vetoed; passed, January 8, 1867, over veto. 

To admit the State of Colorado into the Union; vetoed January 18, 1867. 

For the admission of the State of Nebraska into the Union ; vetoed ; passed, 
February 9, 1867, over veto. 

To provide for the more efficient government of the insurrectionary States ; 
vetoed; passed, March 2, 1867, over veto. 

To regulate the tenure of office; vetoed; passed, March 2, 1867, over veto. 

Bills wh.9ch became laws without the President' s signceture, the constitutional 
limit of ten days having expired without their return : 

To repeal section 13 of "an act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason 
and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other pur- 
poses," approved July 17, 1862; became a law January 22, 1867. 



56G THE TIIIRTT-JflJfTR CO^'GBESS. 

To reirulatc the franchise in the Territories of the United States; became 
a hiw January 31, 1867, 

To rcguhite the duties of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, in pre- 
paring for the organization of the House, and for other purposes ; became a 
law February 20, 1867. 

To declare the sense of an act entitled "an act to restrict the jurisdiction 
of the Court of Claims, and to provide for the payment of certain demands for 
quartermasters' stores and subsistence supplies furnished to the army of the 
United States; " became a law February 22, 1867. 

Recapitulation. — ^Vetoes, 10; pocket vetoes, 1; laws passed over vetoes, 6; 
vetoes sustained, 4; became laws without signature, 4. 

As President Jolm.son proceeded in' his career of ojjposition to 
the legislative branch of the Government, the conviction fastened 
upon the minds of some that he was guilty of crimes rendering 
him liable to impeachment. On the 7th of January, 1867, Hon. 
James M. Ashley, of Ohio, brought before the House of l^epre- 
sentatives articles of impeachment, as follows : 

"I do impeach Andrew Johnson, Vice-President and acting President of the 
United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors. 

"I charge him with a usurpation of power and violation of law: 

"In that he has corruptly used the appointing power; 

"In that he has corruptly used the pardoning power; 

"In that he has corruptly used the veto power; 

"In that he has corruptly disposed of public property of the United States; 

" In that he has corruptly interfered in elections, and committed acts which, 
in contemplation of the Constitution, are high crimes and misdemeanors; 
Thei'efore, 

'■'■Be it resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be, and they are hereby, 
authorized to inquire into the official conduct of Andrew Johnson, Vice-Presi- 
dent of tlie United States, discharging the powers and duties of the office of 
President of the United States, and to report to this House whether, in their 
opinion, the said Andrew Johnson, while in said office, has been guilty of acts 
which are designed or calculated to overthrow, subvert, or corrupt the Govern- 
ment of the United States, or any department or office thereof; and whether 
the said Andrew Johnson has been guilty of any act, or has conspired with 
others to do acts, which, in contemplation of the Constitution, are high crimes 
and misdemeanors, requiring the interposition of the constitutional power of 
this House; and that said committee have power to send for persons and 
papers, and to administer the customary oath to witnesses." 

This resolution was adopted by a vote of one hundred and 
eight to thirty-eight. 

Near the close of the session, the Committee on the Judiciary, 
having in charge the question of impeachment, made a report. 



THE PBESIDEjYT JJ^D COJ^GRESS. 567 

The condition in whicli the subject was left by the Thirty-ninth 
Congress will be seen from the following extract : 

"The duty imposed upon the committee by thia action of the House was 
of the highest and gravest character. No committee, during the entire his- 
tory of the Government, lias ever been charged with a more important trust. 
The responsibility which it imposed was of oppressive weight and of most 
unpleasant nature. Gladly would the committee have escaped from the 
arduous labor imposed upon it by. the resolution of the House; but once 
imposed, prompt, deliberate, and faithful action, with a view to correct results, 
became its duty, and to this end it has directed its efiforts. 

" Soon after the adoption of the resolution by the House, the Hon. James 
M. Ashley communicated to the committee, in support of his charges against 
the President of the United States, such facts as were in his possession, and 
the investigation was proceeded with, and has been continued almost without 
a day's interruption. A large number of witnesses have been examined, 
many documents collected, and every thing done which could be done to 
reach a conclusion of the case. But the investigation covers a broad field, 
embraces many novel, interesting, and important questions, and involves a 
multitude of facts, while most of the witnesses are distant from the capital, 
owing to which, the committee, in view of the magnitude of the interests 
involved in its action, has not been able to conclude its labors, and is not, 
therefore, prepared to submit a definite and final report. If the investigation 
had even approached completeness, the committee would not feel authorized 
to present the result to the House at this late period of the session, unless 
the charge had been so entirely negatived as to admit of no discussion, 
which, in the opinion of the committee, is not the case. Certainly, no affirm- 
ative report could be properly considered in the expiring hours of this 
Congress. 

"The committee, not having fully investigated all the charges preferred 
against the President of the United States, it is deemed inexpedient to sub- 
mit any conclusion beyond the statement that sufficient testimony has been 
brought to its notice to justify and demand a further prosecution of the 
investigation. 

" The testimony which the committee has taken will pass into the custody 
of the Clerk of the House, and can go into the hands of such committee as 
may be charged with the duty of bringing this investigation to a close, so that 
the labor expended upon it may not have been in vain. 

" The committee regrets its inability definitely to dispose of the important 
subject committed to its charge, and presents this report for its own justifica- 
tion, and for the additional purpose of notifying the succeeding Congress of 
the incompleteness of its labors, and that they should be completed." 

With the acceptance of this report, the impeachment was at an 
end so far as the action of the Thirty-ninth Congress was con- 
cerned. The subject was handed over to the consideration of the 
Fortieth Congress. 



368 THE THIBTT-J^UfTH CONGRESS. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

PERSONAL. 

Contested Seats — Mr. Stockton votes for Himself — ^New Jersey's loss 
OF T'wo Senators — Losses of Vermont — Suicide op James H. Lane — 
Death in the House — General Scott — ^Lincoln's Eulogy and Statue — 
Mr. Sumner on Fine Arts in the Capitol — Censure of Mr. Chanler — 
Petition for the expulsion of Garret Davis — Grinnell assaulted by 
Kousseau — The Action of the House — Leader of the House. 

MATTERS of interest relating to the members of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress remain to be noticed. Some names of mem- 
bers appear in the opening scenes of Congress which were 
substituted by others before the close. This was occasioned partly 
through successful contests for seats by persons who, after an in- 
vestigation of their claims, were declared to have been legally 
elected, but failed, through fraud or mistake, to receive their cre- 
dentials. The right of Mr. Voorhees, of Indiana, to a seat in 
the Thirty-ninth Congress was contested by Henry D. Washburn. 
The testimony in this case was laid before the Committee on 
Elections early in the session, and after patient hearing of the 
parties and careful consideration of the subject, the committee 
reported hi favor of Mr. Washburn and unseated Mr. Voorhees. 

The seat in Congress taken at the opening of the session by 
James Brooks, of New York, was decided by the committee, after 
consideration of the claims of the contestant, to belong to William 
E. Dodge, a merchant of New York city. 

The right of John P. Stockton, of New Jersey, to a seat in 
the Senate having been disputed on account of irregularity in 
his election, the Senate came to a vote on the question, after 
con.siderable discussion, on the 23d of March, 1866. Mr. Stock- 
ton was declared entitled to his place by the close vote of 22 to 
21, he giving the decisive vote in favor of himself. There arose 



PERSOJfAL. 569 

a very exciting debate as to the right of a Senator to vote for 
himself under sueh circumstances. Mr. Stockton finally yielded 
to the arguments against his right to sit in judgment on his own 
case, and he was unseated March 27th by a vote of 22 to 21. 
For a time the seat thus vacated, to which New Jersey was en- 
titled in the Senate, remained unoccupied on account of the re- 
fusal of the Republican Speaker of the New Jersey Senate to 
give his vote in favor of the nominee of the Union caucus, Mr. 
Cattell. On account of the nearly equal balance of the parties, 
the choice was long deferred, but eventually made in flivor of Mr. 
Cattell. The other seat held by New Jersey in the Senate was 
practically vacant for a cousidera])lc time on account of the ill- 
ness of its incumbent, Mr. William Wright, who consequently 
resigned and eventually died before the expiration of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress. 

Other seats in Congress Avere vacated by death. Of all the 
States, Vermont suffered most severely in this respect. A part 
of the proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Congress consists of fune- 
ral addresses and eulogies upon Judge Collamer, a distinguished 
Senator from Vermont, whose term of service, had he lived, 
would have expired with the close of this Congress. He died, 
lamented by the nation, on the 8th of November, 1865. One 
who took a prominent part in the funeral obsequies of Mr. Col- 
lamer was Solomon Foot, the surviving Senator from Vermont. 
A man termed, from his length of service, "the father of the 
Senate," long its presiding officer, of purest morals, incorruptible 
integrity, and faithful industry, he died universally lamented on 
the 28th of March, 1866. Mr. Foot's death created a profound 
impression, since it exhibited, in a most remarkable manner, the 
eifect of Christianity in affording its possessor a happy close of 
life. 

The death of another Senator stands forth in striking contrast 
with that of Mr. Foot. On the first of July, 1866, Senator 
James H. Lane shot himself at Leavenworth, Kansas. While 
on his Avay home from Washington, when at St. Louis, he had 
intimated a determination to commit suicide. His friends watched 
him closely, and obtained possession of his pocket-knife lest he 
might use it for the fatal purpose. Mr. Lane having reached 
Leavenworth, two of his friends invited him to ride with them 
on Sabbath afternoon. After getting into the carriage, he 



570 THE THIRTY-J^IJfTH COJfGRESS. 

expressed a desire to return to his room for his caue, refusing 
to allow any one to go for him. Mr. Lane having returned 
with his cane, they drove to the heights overlooking the 
city. He entered cheerfully into the conversation, remarking 
upon the beauty of the city and landscape. On returning, they 
had to pass through a gate that separated two fields. One of the 
gentlemen alighted to open the gate. At the same time Mr. 
Lane stepped down from the carriage, and, passing around be- 
hind it, said, " Good-by, gentlemen," and instantly discharged a 
pistol with its muzzle in his mouth. The ball passed out at the 
top of his head, near the center of the skull, producing a fatal 
wound. The unhappy man lingered for a few days in a state 
of unconsciousness and died. Thus ended the stirring, troubled 
life of one who as a politician had occupied no inconsiderable 
space in the public eye. 

A number of seats in the House of Representatives were va- 
cated by death. James Humphrey, an able and honored mem- 
ber from New York, died in Brooklyn on the 16th of June, 
1866. During the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, 
two members of the House of Representatives were removed by 
death — Philip Johnson, of Pennsylvania, in his third term of 
Congressional service, and Henry Grider, of Kentucky, a veteran 
member, who, having served in Congress from 1843 to 1847, 
was more recently a member of the Thirty-seventh, Thirty-eighth, 
and Thirty-ninth Congresses. 

Congress was called upon to pay funeral honors to others than 
its members. The death of General Scott, so long the illustrious 
chief of the military establishment of the nation, was regarded 
with due solemnity and honor by Congress, who deputized a 
large committee to attend the funeral obsequies at ^yest Point. 
An equestrian statue of the distinguished General was voted by 
Congress to adorn the public grounds of the national capital. 

The name of Abraham Lincoln, the nation's martyred Pres- 
ident, was always pronounced with profoundest respect and sin- 
cerest gratitude in the halls of Congress. His birthday, February 
12th, was celebrated by the adjournment of Congress, and such 
an assembly as the hall of Representatives has rarely witnessed, 
to hear a eulogy pronounced by IVIr. Bancroft, the American 
historian. An appropriation of ten thousand dollars was made 
to pay a young artist, ^Nliss Minnie Ream, to model a statue 

V 



PERSOJfAL. 571 

of Abraham Lincoln. This proposition elicited an animated 
discussion, and was the occasion of a most interesting address 
by Mr. Sumner on Art in the Capitol. "Surely this edifice," 
said he, "so beautiful and interesting, should not be opened to 
the experiments of luitried talent. Only the finished artists 
should be invited to its ornamentation. 

"Sir, I doubt if you consider enough the character of this 
edifice in ■which ■\ve are now assembled. Possessing the advan- 
tage of an incomparable situation, it is one of the first-class 
structures in the world. Surrounded by an amphitheater of 
hills, with the Potomac at its feet, it resembles the capitol in 
Rome, surrounded by the Alban hills, with the Tiber at its feet. 
But the situation is grander than that of the Roman capitol. 
The edifice itself is worthy of the situation. It has beauty of 
form and sublimity in proportions, even if it lacks originality 
in conception. In itself it is a work of art. It ought not to 
receive in the way of ornamentation any thing which is not a 
work of art. Unhappily this rule has not always prevailed, or 
there would not be so few pictures and marbles about us worthy 
of the place they occupy. But bad pictures and ordinary mar- 
bles should warn us against adding to their number." 

Perhaps no Congress in the history of the country presents 
fewer disagreeable incidents of a personal nature than this. The 
Democrats in Congress being in such a small minority as to be 
unable to do any thing effectual either to impede or advance 
legislation, could only present their vain protests in words. 
Chafing under the difficulties they encountered, it is not sur- 
prising that at times they used language so ill-timed and unpar- 
liamentary as to call forth the censure of the House. 

On one occasion, Mr. Chanler, of New York, submitted a 
resolution "that the independent, patriotic, and constitutional 
course of the President of the United States, in seeking to pro- 
tect, by the veto power, the rights of the people of this Union 
against the wicked and revolutionary acts of a few malignant 
and mischievous men meets with the approval of this House, 
and deserves the cordial support of all loyal citizens of the 
United States." 

For introducing this resolution, the House voted to censure 
Mr. Chanler as having " attempted a gross insult to the House." 

Before the vote was taken, Mr. Chanler said : " If by my de- 



572 THE THIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GEESS. 

fiance I could drive your party from this hall, I would do so; 
if by my vote I could crush you, I would do so, and put the 
whole party, with your leader, the. gentleman from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Stevens], into that political hell surrounded by bayonets 
referred to by him in his argument on Thursday last." 

In the Senate a petition was presented from citizens of New 
York praying that Garret Davis be expelled from the Senate, 
and, "with other traitors, held to answer to the law for his 
crime, since he stood in the attitude of an avowed enemy of 
the Government" — since he had made the declaration in refer- 
ence to the Civil Rights Bill " that if the bill should become a 
law, he should feel compelled to regard himself as an enemy of 
the Government, and to work for its overthrow." 

"It is true," replied Mr. Davis, "that I used in substance 
the words that are imputed to me in that petition; but, as a 
part of their context, I used a great many more. As an example 
of garbling, the petition reminds me of a specimen that I heard 
when I was a young man. It was to this effect: 'The Bible 
teaches " that there is no God." ' When those words were read 
in connection with the context, the passage read in about these 
terms: 'The fool hath said in his heart that there is no God.' 
That specimen of the Bible was about as fair as this garbled 
statement is of what I said upon the matter to which it refers." 

The most serious subject coming up for the censure of the 
House was an assault made by Mr. Rousseau, of Kentucky, 
upon Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa. In many of its features this 
incident resembles the "affairs" of a personal character which 
were of frequent occurrence when Southern members were in 
Congress before the war. In February, 1866, Mr. Rousseau, 
in the course of a speech on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, made 
the remark, "If you intend to arrest white people on the ex 
parte statement of negroes, and hold them to suit your conven- 
ience for trial, and fine and imprison them, then I say that I 
oppose you ; and if you should so arrest and punish me, I would 
kill you when you set me at liberty." 

To this Mr. Grinnell replied, "I care not whether the gen- 
tleman was four years in the war on the Union side or four 
years on the other side, but I say that he degraded his State and 
uttered a sentiment I thought unworthy of an American officer 



PERSOJ^AL. 573 

when he said that he would do such an act on the complaint of 
a negro against him." 

To this Mr. Rousseau, on the following day, replied : " I pro- 
nounce the assertion that I have degraded my State and uttered 
a sentiment unworthy an American officer to be false, a vile 
slander, and unworthy to be uttered by any gentleman upon this 
floor." 

Some months after this, Mr. Rousseau, in a public speech de- 
livered in New York city, denounced Mr. Grinnell as a " pitiable 
politician from Iowa." In a speech made in the House on the 
11th of June, Mr. Rousseau said of Mr. Grinnell: "I do not 
suppose that any member of this House believed a word he said. 
When a member can so far depart from what every body be- 
lieves he ought to know and does know is the truth, it is a 
degradation, not to his State, but to himself" 

" When any man," replied Mr. Grinnell — " I care not whether 
he stands six feet high, whether he wears buff and carries the 
air of a certain bird that has a more than usual extremity of 
tail, wanting in the other extremity — says that he would not 
believe what I utter, I will say that I was never born to stand 
under an imputation of that sort. 

"The gentleman begins courting sympathy by sustaining the 
President of the United States preparatory to his assault ujjon 
me. Now, sir, if he is a defender of the President of the United 
States, all I have to say is, God save the President from such 
an incoherent, brainless defender, equal in valor in civil and 
in military life. His military record — who has read it? In 
what volume of history is it found?" 

Mr. Rousseau determined to resent the insult which he con- 
ceived to be offered him in this speech by inflicting a bodily 
chastisement upon Mr. Grinnell. On the morning of June 14th, 
Mr. Rousseau informed a military friend of his purpose of flog- 
ging Mr. Grinnell. The person so informed procured a pistol 
and waited in the capitol until the close of the day's session, in 
order to be present at the flogging and see "fair play." Two 
other friends of Mr. Rousseau, also armed with pistols, happened 
to be present when the scene transpired. While Mr. Grinnell 
was passing from the House through the east portico of the cap- 
itol, he ^vas met by Mr. Rousseau, who, in an excited manner, 



574 THE THIRTY- KIKTH CO K GUESS. 

said, " I have waited four days for an apology for words spoken 
here upon this floor." 

"What of that?" asked Mr. Grinuelh 

" I will teach you what of that/' said Mr. Eousseau, who then 
proceeded to strike Mr. Grinnell about the head and shoulders 
with a rattan, stopping occasionally to lecture him, and saying, 
"Now, you d — d puppy and poltroon, look at yourself" 

After receiving half a dozen blows, Mr. Grinnell exclaimed, " I 
don't want to hurt you." 

"I don't expect you to hurt me, you d — d scoundrel," said 
Mr. Eousseau, " but you tried to injure me upon the floor of the 
House. And now look at yourself; Avhipped here; whipped like 
a dog, disgraced and degraded ! Where are your one hundred 
and twenty-seven thousand constituents now ? " 

A committee was appointed to investigate this disgraceful 
affair. In just one month after the transaction, a report was 
presented, signed by Messrs. Spalding, Banks, and Thayer, stating 
the facts in the case, and recommending the expulsion of Mr. 
Eousseau. They also proposed a resolution to express disapproval 
of the reflections made by Mr. Grinnell upon the character of Mr. 
Rousseau. The " views of the minority " were also presented by 
;Messrs. Raymond and Hogan. They recommended that the 
punishment of Mr. Rousseau should be a public reprimand by 
the Speaker. After protracted discussion, the House came to a 
final decision. The motion to expel, requiring two-thirds, failed 
by a few votes. The motion by which the Speaker was directed 
to publicly reprimand" Mr. Rousseau Avas carried by a vote of 89 
to 30. There were not enough in favor of the motion to disap- 
prove of Mr. Grinnell's remarks to call the ayes and noes. Mr. 
Rousseau endeavored to evade the execution of the sentence by 
sending his resignation to the Governor of Kentucky. The 
House declared that a member could not dissolve his connection 
with the body under such circumstances, without its consent. On 
the 21st of July, the execution of the order was of the House 
having been demanded, Mr. Rousseau appeared at the bar, when 
the Speaker said, " General Rousseau, the House of Representa- 
tives have declared you guilty of a violation of its rights and 
privileges in a premeditated personal assault upon a member for 
words spoken in debate. This condemnation they have placed 
on their journal, and have ordered that you shall be publicly rep- 



TEESOKAL. 575 

rimandcd by the Speaker at the bar of tlie House. No words 
of mine can add to the force of this order, in obedience to which 
I now pronounce upon you its reprimand." 

Early in the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, an 
interesting case came up relating to the privileges and immuni- 
ties .of a member of Congress. Charles V. Culver, Representa- 
tive of the Twentieth District of Pennsylvania, having been en- 
gaged very extensively in banking, made a failure in business. 
In June, 1866, during the session of Congress, one of his cred- 
itors caused his arrest upon a contract for the return of cer- 
tain bonds and notes alleged to have been lent to him, charging 
that the debt incurred thereby was fraudulently contracted by 
Culver. In default of required security, Mr. Culver was com- 
mitted to jail, where he remained until the 18th of December. 
Mr. Culver claimed his immunity as a member of Congress, under 
the clause of the Constitution which provides that Senators and 
Eepresentatives " shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and 
breach of the peace, be privileged fi-om arrest during their attend- 
ance at the sessions of their respective houses, and in going to 
and returning from the same." The judge decided that the 
offense fell under the constitutional exception, and was to be re- 
garded as a " breach of the peace." From this remarkable de- 
cision an appeal was made to the House of Representatives 
itself, as " the highest court of the nation, and depository of its 
supreme authority." The case was referred to the Judiciary 
Committee, who reported a resolution, unanimously adopted by 
the House, directing the Speaker to issue his warrant to the Ser- 
geant-at-Arms, commanding him to deliver forthwith Charles V. 
Culver from the custody of the sheriff and jailor of Venango 
County, and make return to the House of the warrant, and the 
manner in which he may have executed the same. The Ser- 
geant-at-Arms proceeded immediately to execute the order of the 
House, and in a short time the Speaker announced that Mr. 
Culver was unrestrained in his seat as a member of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress. 

Among the numerous distinguished men who constituted 
the Thirty-ninth Congress, no one towered so conspicuously 
above the rest as to be universally recognized and followed as 
the " leader." This title has been frequently applied to Thad- 
deus Stevens. He was in many respects the most prominent 



576 THE THIBTT-JflJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

fio-iirc in the Thirty-ninth Congress. His age, his long fidelity 
to the principles of the Republican party, his uncompromising 
sjiirit, and his force of character made him a conspicuous and 
influential member of the House, but did not cause him to be 
generally recognized or implicitly followed as a leader. 

In so large a legislative body, composed of so many men of 
independent thought and action, acknowledging no parliamentary 
leader, it is remarkable that the wheels of legislation should run 
so smoothly, and that after all the disagreement in discussion, 
great results should be at last so harmoniously wrought out. 
This is partly due to the patriotic spirit which pervaded the 
minds of its members, inducing them to lay aside minor differ- 
ences of opinion for the good of that common country for which 
their constituents had lately made such tremendous sacrifice. 
The result is also owing to the parliamentary ability and tact 
of him who sat patiently and faithfully as Speaker of the House. 
Deprived by his position of opportunity of taking part in the 
discussions, which his genius and experience fitted him to illus- 
trate, he nevertheless did much to direct the current of legislation 
which flowed smoothly or turbidly before him. The resolution 
of thanks to the Speaker, moved by a member of the minority, 
and passed unanimously by the House, was no unmeaning com- 
pliment, but was an honor fairly earned and justly paid. 

The labor of presiding over the Senate — a much lighter task, 
owing to the smaller number which composed the body — was 
faithfully performed by Mr. Foster. His remarks to the Senate 
on retiring from the chair as President jpro tempore, and closing a 
career of twelve years as a member of the body, were most beau- 
tiful and impressive. 

Benjamin F. Wade, " a Senator from Ohio," having been duly 
elected President pro tempore of the Senate, took the " iron-clad 
oath " and assumed his seat as acting Vice-President of the 
United States without ostentation or remark. 

At twelve o'clock noon of March 4, 1867, the Thirty-ninth 
Congress closed its existence, handing over its great enactments 
to the country, and its unfinished business to its successor, which 
immediately came into life. 



BIOGEAPHIOAL INDEX 



THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS. 



(The numbers appended to the following sketches refer to preceding pages of the book.) 
[The names of Republicans are printed in KOMAN ; of Democrats in ITALICS.'] 

JOHN B. ALLEY was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, January 7, 1817. Having 
learned the art of shoemaking, he devoted himself to the shoe and leather trade. 
After having served several years in the City Council of Lynn, he was chosen a 
member of the Governor's Council in 1851. He was a member of the Massachu- 
setts Senate in 1853, and of the State Constitutional Convention held in the fol- 
lowing year. In 1858 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massa- 
chusetts. He entered upon his fourth Congressional term in 1865 as a member 
of the Thirty-Ninth Congress ; and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by 
General Butler. 

WILLIAM B. ALLISON .was born in Wayne County, Ohio, March 2, 1839. 
He was educated at Alleghany College, Pennsylvania, and at Western Reserve 
College, Ohio. From 1851 to 1857 he practiced law in Ohio, and subsequently 
settled in Dubuque, Iowa. He was a member of the Chicago Convention of 1860. 
As a member of the Governor's staif, in 1861, he rendered efficient service in 
raising troops for the war. In 1863 he was elected a Representatire in the Thir- 
ty-Eighth Congress, from 0bi«. He was re-elected in 1864, and again in 1860. 
-537. i~ ^^^xs-0.^ 

OAKES AMES was born in Easton, Massachusetts, January 10, 1804. He 
has devoted most of his life to the bjisiness of manufacturing, taking but little 
public part in politics. Having served for two years as a member of the Execu- 
tive Council of his State, ho was, in 1863, 1864, and 1866, elected a Representa- 
tive in Congress, from Massachusetts. — 31. 

SYDENHAM E. ANCONA was born in Warwick, Pennsylvania, Novem- 
ber 20, 1824. Removing to Berks County, he was, for a number of years, con- 
nected with the Reading Railroad Company. In 1860 he was elected a Repre- 
sentative to the Thirty-Seventh Congress from Pennsylvania, and was subse- 
quently returned to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. He was 
succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by J. Lawrence Getz. 

GEORGE W. ANDERSON was born in Tennessee, May 23, 1833. Having 
received a liberal education, he adopted the profession of law. In 1853 he settled 
37 



57S TIIIRTY-J^IJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

in Missouri, wliere ho soon after became editor of tlie " Nortla-East Jlissourian." 
In 1858 he was elected to the State Legislature. In 18G3 he was chosen a State 
Senator, and served as such until he was elected a Representative from Missouri 
to the Thii-ty-Ninth Congress. He was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

HENRY B. ANTHONY was born of Quaker ancestry, at Coventry, Rhode 
Island, April 1, 1815. He graduated at Brown University in 1833. He became 
editor of the " Providence Journal " in 1838. He was chosen Governor of Rhode 
Island in 1849, and served two terms. In 1859 he was elected a Senator in Con- 
gress from Rhode Island, and was subsequently re-elected for a second term, 
which ends in 1871.— 36, 37, 487, 488, 497. 

SAMUEL M. ARNELL was bom in Maury Covmty, Tennessee, May 3, 1834. 
He studied at Amherst College, Massachusetts, and adopted the profession of 
law, which he practiced in Columbia, Tennessee. In April, 1865, he was elected 
a member of the Legislature of Tennessee, and in the following August was 
elected a Representative in Congress. The Tennessee delegation not being ad- 
mitted at the opening of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, he continued to hold his 
seat in the Legislature. He was the author of the Franchise Law, which be- 
came a part of the Constitution of Tennessee, and of the Civil Rights Bill of 
Tennessee. He took his seat as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress at the 
opening of its second session, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

DELOS R. ASHLEY studied and practiced the profession of law in Monroe, 
Michigan. In 1849 he removed to California, where he was elected District 
Attorney in 1851. He was elected to the Assembly in 1854, and to the State 
Senate in 1856. He subsquently held the office of Treasurer of State. Having 
removed to Nevada in 1864, he was elected the Representative from that State to 
the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

JAMES M. ASHLEY was born in Pennsylvania, November 14, 1834. He 
spent • several years of his early life in a printing-office, and was some time a 
clerk on Ohio and Mississippi steamboats. He studied law, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1849, but immediately engaged in the business of boat-building. 
He subsequently went into the wholesale drug business in Toledo. In 1858 he 
was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and has 
been a member of every succeeding Congress, including the Fortieth. — 306, 503, 
513,515,525,566. 

JEHU BAKER was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, November 4, 1833. 
He received a good education, and entered the profession of law. Having settled 
in Illinois, he was, in 1864, elected a Representative from that State to the Thii^ 
ty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. — 340, 560. 

JOHN D. BALDWIN was born in North Stoningtou, Connecticut, September 
38, 1810. He graduated at Yale College. Having studied law, and gone through 
a course of theological studies, he published a volume of poems, and became 
connected with the press, first in Hartford, and then in Boston, where he was 
editor of the " Daily Commonwealth." He subsequently became proprietor of 
the " Worcester Spy." In ,1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Convention. 
In 1863 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, and 
was re-elected in 1864 and 1866. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IjYDEX. 579 

NATHANIEL P. BANKS was born in Waltbam, Massachusetts, January 
00, 181G. His parents, being poor, could afford him no advantages of education 
save tliose of the common school. He was editor of a newspaper first in Waltliam 
and then in Lowell. Ho studied law, but did not p ractice. In 1848 ho was 
elected to the Legislature. He served in both Houses, and oiiiciated part of the 
time as Speaker. He was Prcsidait of the Convention, held in 1853, for revis- 
ing the Constitution of Massachusetts. From 1853 to 1857 he was a Represen- 
tative in Congress. During his second term in Congress ho held the office of 
Speaker of the House, with imsurpassed acceptability and success. In 1857 he 
was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and held the office for three successive 
terms. During the late rebellion ho served as a Major-General of Volunteers. 
In 1865 he was elected a member of the Tliirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected 
in 1866.— 25, 31, 445, 524, 525, 539, 553. 

ABRAHAM A. BARKER was born in Lovell, Maine, March 30, 1816. He 
received a common-school education, and engaged in agricultural pursuits. 
He was an early and earnest advocate of temperance and anti-slavery. In 1854 
he removed to Pennsylvania, and entered upon the lumber business and mer- 
cantile pursuits. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Convention. In 
1864 he was elected to represent the Seventeenth District of Pennsylvania in the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Daniel 
J. Morrell. 

PORTUS BAXTER was born in Brownington, Vermont. He received a 
liberal education, and engaged in mercantile and agricultural piirsuits. In 1852 
and 1856 he was a Presidential Elector. In 1860 he was elected a Representa- 
tive from Vermont to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the 
Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. He was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by Worthington C. Smith. 

FERNANDO C. BE AM AN was born in Chester, Vermont, June 28, 1814, 
and was removed in boyhood to New York. He received an English education 
at the Franklin County Academy, and studied law in Rochester. In 1838 he 
removed to Michigan, and engaged in the practice of his profession. He served 
sis years as Prosecuting Attorney for the county of Lenawee, and four years as 
Judge of Probate. In 1856 he was a Presidential Elector. In 1860 he was 
elected a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was 
successively re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Con- 
gresses. — 447. 

JOHN F. BENJAMIN was born in Cicero, New York, January 23, 1817. 
After having spent three years in Texas, he settled in Missouri, in 1848, and 
engaged in the practice of law. He was a member of the Missouri Legislature 
in 1851 and 1852, and was a Presidential Elector in 1856. He entered the 
Missouri Cavalry as a private, in 1861, and by a series of promotions reached the 
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He resigned to accept the appointment of Pro- 
vost-Marshal for the Eighth District of Missouri. He was a delegate to the 
Baltimore Convention of 1864, and was the same year elected a Representative 
from Missouri to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and in 1866 was re-elected. — 366. 

TEUNIS O. BERGEN' was born in Brooklyn, New York, October 6, 1806, 

^ He received an academical education at Flatbush, and engaged in surveying and 

horticulture. He served the tovra of New Utrecht as supervisor for twenty-three 



5 so THIRTY- J^I:N'TH COJfGRESS. 

years. He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1846. lu 
1860 he was a member of the Democratic Conventions of Charleston and Bal- 
timore. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from New York to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress. At the close of his Congressional term he was elected 
a member of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867. He was 
succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Demas Barnes. 

JOHN BIDWELL was born in Chautauqua county, N. Y., August 5, 1819. 
In 1829 he removed with his father to Erie, Pennsylvania, and two years after 
to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where, through his own exertions he obtained au 
academical education. In 1838 he taught school in Darke County, Ohio, and sub- 
sequently taught two years in Missouri. In 1841 he emigrated to California, one 
of the first adventurers on the wild overland route. At the breaking out of the 
war with Mexico, he entered the service of the United States as a private, and 
reached the rank of Major. He was among the first who discovered gold on 
Feather River in 1848. In 1849 he was elected to the State Constitutional Con- 
vention, and to the Senate of the first Legislature of California. In 1860 he was 
a delegate to the Charleston Convention, and refused to sanction the secession 
movement there made. In 1863 he was appointed Brigadier General of Califor- 
nia militia, when it was necessary to organize in order to preserve the peace of 
the State. In 1864 he was a member of the Baltimore Convention, which re- 
nominated Lincoln. The same year he was elected a Representative from Cal- 
ifornia to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was not a candidate for re-election 
to Congress, since nearly all the papers in the State had hoisted his name as 
candidate for Governor. He failed, however, to receive the nomination for that 
office by the Republican Convention. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Con- 
gress by James A. Johnson. — 31. 

JOHN A. BINGHAM was born in Pennsylvania in 1815. na%-ing received 
an academical education, and spending two years in a printing-office, he entered 
Franklin College, in Ohio, but owing to ill-health, did not prosecute his studies 
to graduation. He was admitted to the bar in 1840, and from 1845 to 1849 he 
was Prosecuting Attorney for the county of Tuscarawas. In 1854 he was elected 
a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Fourth Congress, and was re-elected to 
the Thirty-Fifth, Thirty-Sixth, and Thirty-Seventh Congresses. In 1864 he was 
appointed a Judge- Advocate in the Army, and Solicitor of the Court of Claims. 
He was Assistant Judge- Advocate in the trial of the Assassination Conspirators, 
in May, 1865. In 1865 he took his seat for his fifth term of service in Congress 
and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.— 25, 67, 237, 285, 319, 357, 434, 448, 
474, 475, 505, 520, 526, 537, * 

JAMES G. BLAINE was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 
1830. After graduating at Washington College, 1847, he removed to Maine 
and became editor of the "Kennebec Journal," and "Portland Advertiser. He 
was four years a member of the Maine Legislature, and served two years aa 
Speaker of the House. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from INIaine to 
the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was successively re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth 
and Fortieth Congresses.— 333, 437, 527, 528, 536. 

HENRY T. BLOW was born in Southampton county, Virginia, July 15, 
1817. In 1830 he removed to Missouri, and soon after graduated at the St. 
Louis University. He engaged extensively in the drug and lead business. He 



■r 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. 581 

served four years in the Senate of Missouri. In 1861 be was appointed by 
President Lincoln Minister to Venezuela, but resigned the position before the 
expiration of a year. In 18G3 lie was elected a Representative from Missoui-i 
to tlie Thirty-Eiglith Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty -Ninth. He was 
succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Carman A. Newcoinb. 

GEORGE S. BOUTWELLwas born in Brook! ine, Massachusetts, January 
28, 1818, and removed to Qroton in 1835. He was engaged in mercantile 
business as clerk and proprietor for several years, and subsequently entered the 
profession of the law. From 1843 to 1850 he was a member of the Massachu- 
setts House of Representatives. In 1849 and 1850 he was Bank Commissioner. 
In 1851 he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and served two terms. He 
was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853. He was 
eleven years a member and Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 
and ten years a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. He was 
appointed Commissioner of the Internal Revenue, in July, 18G2, and organized 
the Revenue system. In 1863 he took his scat as a Representative in Congress 
from Massachusetts, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Con- 
gresses. He is the author of a " Manual of the School System, and School Laws 
of Massachusetts," " Educational Topics and lustitutions," " A Manual of the 
Revenue System," and a volume just published, entitled " Speeches on Recon- 
struction."— 31, 91, 442, 475, 526, 528, 536, 553, 

BENJAMIN M. BO YEB was bom in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, 
January 22, 1823. He graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, and adopted 
the profession of law. In 1848 h*e was elected District Attorney for the county 
of Montgomery. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to 
the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.— 
54, 438. 

ALLEN A. BRADFORD was born in Friendship, Maine, July 23, 1815. In 
1841 he emigrated to JNIissouri, where he was admitted to the bar in 1843. He 
held the office of Clerk of the Circuit Court of Atchinson County, and subse- 
quently removed to Iowa, where he was appointed Judge of the Sixth Judicial 
Circuit. Resigning this office in 1855, he went to Nebraska, and became a 
member of the Legislative Council. Having, in 1800, settled in Colorado, he 
was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court for that territory, and held this 
office until he was elected a delegate to the Thirty-Nmth Congress from Colo- 
rado. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by George M. Chilcott. 

AUGUSTUS BRANDAGEE was born in New London, Conn., July 15, 1828. 
He graduated at Yale College in 1849, and at the Yale Law School in 1851. From 
1854 to 1801 he served in the Connecticut Legislature, of which he was Speaker 
in the latter year. He was a Presidential Elector in 1801, and was elected a 
Representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress from Connecticut in 1803, and 
was re-elected m 1805. He was. succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Henry 
H. Starkweather. 

HENRY II. P. BROMWELL was born in Baltimore, Maryland, August 26, 
1823. Having spent seven years of his boyhood in Oliio, he went to Illinois in 
1836. and came to the bar in 1853. He was subsequently an editor, Judge of a 
County Court, and Presidential Elector. In 1864 he was elected a Representa- 
tive from Illinois to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and in 1866 was re-elected to 
the Fortieth Congress.— 349, 538. 



58% THIRTY-mJ^TH COJVGEESS. 

JAMES BROOKS was born in Portland, Maine, NovemTjer 10, 1810. 
When eleven years old lie became a clerk in a store. At sixteen 
lie -was a scliool-tcaclier, and at twenty-one graduated at Waterville Col- 
leo-e. After several years spent in traveling and writing letters for tlie 
press, he was, in 1835, elected to the Legislature of Maine. In 183G he 
established the "New York Daily Express," of which he has since been 
chief editor. In 1847 he was elected to the General Assembly of New York. 
In 1849 and again in 1851 he was elected a Representative in Congress, lu 
1863 he was returned to Congress. In December, 1865, he took his place as a 
member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, but held it only until the 6th of April 
following, his seat having been successfully contested by William E. Dodge. In 
1866 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Fortieth Congress. 
—17,20,25,335,336, 568. 

JOHN M. BROOMALL was born in Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, in 1816. 
Having received a common-school education, he devoted himself to legal studies 
and pursuits. In 1861 he was a Presidential Elector. In 1862 he was elected 
to represent the Seventh Pennsylvania District in Congress. Two years later 
was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth 
Congress.— 223, 360. 439, 504. 

B. GRATZ BROWN is grandson of John Brown, who was United States 
Senator from Kentucky in 1805. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, May 28, 
1826. Having graduated at Yale College and studied law, he settled at St. Louis, 
Mo., where he edited the " Missouri Democrart," from 1854 to 1859, and was a 
member of the State Legislature. He raised a regiment at the breaking out of 
the war, which he commanded during its term of service. He was among the 
foremost champions of freedom in Missouri, and was elected a Senator in Con- 
gress from that State for the term commencing in 1863 and ending in 1867: He 
was succeeded by Charles D. Drake.— 285, 477, 493. 

CHARLES R. B UCKALEW was born in Columbia Coimty, Pennsylvania, 
December 28, 1821. He was admitted to practice law in 1843, and was elected 
Prosecuting Attorney for his native county in 1845. In 1850 he was elected a 
Senator in the State Legislature, which office he held for a series of years. In 
1854 he was a Commissioner to exchange the ratifications of a treaty with Para- 
guay. He was a Presidential Elector in 1856, and Chairman of the State Demo- 
cratic Committee in 1857. He was appointed by President Buchanan Minister 
to Ecquador in 1858, and held the position until 1861. He was, in 1863, elected 
United States Senator from Pennsylvania for the term ending 1869.— 296, 401, 
413, 494, 532, 535, 547, 548. 

RALPH P. BUCKLAND was born in Leyden, Massachusetts, January 20, 
1812, and was removed by his parents to Ohio in the same year. From 1831 to 1834 
he was clerk in a large cotton commission house in New Orleans. Returning to 
Ohio, he took an academical course of study at Kenyon College. Having studied 
law, he was admitted to the bar in 1837. He was a member of the Philadelphia 
Whig Convention of 1848. In 1855 and 1857 was elected to the Senate of Ohio. 
In 1861 he was appointed Colonel of the Seventy-Second Ohio Infantry, and com- 
manded a brigade in the battle of Sbiloh. He was promoted to the rank of 
Brigadier General, and participated in the siege of Vicksburg. He was subse- 
quently assigned to the command of the District of Memjihis, and defeated For- 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. . 583 

rest in liis attack on that city. At the close of tho war he was brevetted a Ma 
jor General of Volunteers. In 1804, wliilo absent in the field, be was elected a 
Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 
1866. 

HEZEKIAH S. BUNDT was born in Marietta County. Ohio, August 15, 1817. 
Having been left an orphan when a mere boy, and the support of the family de- 
volving upon him, his opportunities for attaining an education were limited. From 
18o5 to 18-16 ho was engaged in mercantile pursuits, and subsequently turned 
his attention to farming and the furnace business. Meanwhile ho studied law, 
and was admitted to the bar in 1850. He served two terms in the House of 
Representatives of Ohio, and was, in 1855, elected State Senator. In 18G0 he 
was a Presidential Elector, and in 1861 he was elected a Representative from 
Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded in tho Fortieth Congress 
by John T. Wilson. 

WALTER A. BURLEIOE was the Delegate from Dakota Territory in 
the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He received a common-school education, studied 
medicine, and practiced his profession for a number of years. He was subse- 
quently appointed an Indian Agent, and removed to the West. Soon after the 
organization of the Territory of Dakota he was elected to represent its interests 
in Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

WILLL\M B. CAMPBELL was born in Tennessee, and served as Captain 
of mounted Volunteers in the Florida War. He served for some time in the 
State Legislature, and was a Representative in Congress from 1837 to 1843. He 
commanded the first regiment of Tennessee Volunteers in the Mexican War, 
and at its close he was elected a Circuit Judge. From 1851 to 1853 he was Gov- 
ernor of Tennessee. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from Tennessee to 
the Thirty-Ninth Congress, but was not admitted imtil July, 1866. He died of 
disease of the heart at his residence in Lebanon, Tennessee, August 19, 1867. 

ALEXANDER G. CATTELL was bom in Salem, New Jersey, in 1816. He 
received a commercial education, and began his business-life, as a clerk, at the 
age of thirteen. Before reaching his majority he had advanced to the head of a 
large and flourishing business. In 1840 he was elected to the General Assembly 
of New Jersey, and in 1844 he was a member of the Convention called to frame 
a new Constitution for that State. He subsequently became the head of the ex- 
tensive mercantile house of A. G. Cattell & Co., of Philadelphia. During a resi- 
dence of nine years in that city he was several times elected to the City Council, 
and was President of tho Corn Exchange Association, which, largely through 
his exertions, recruited and equipped two and a half regiments for ser'vice in the 
late war. Having resumed his residence in New Jersey, he Avas, in 1866, elected 
a Senator in Congress from that State. — 569. 

ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, Decem- 
ber 10, 1813. He received an academical education, and removed to Michigan, 
where he engaged extensively in mercantile pursuits and in banking. In 1851 
he held the office of Mayor of Detroit. In 1852 he was an imsuccessful candi- 
date for Governor of Michigan. He entered the United States Senate, during 
the Thirty-Fifth Congress, as the successor of General Cass. In 1863 he was re- 
elected to the Senate for the term ending in 1869.— 27, 397. 



5S4 TEIRTY-KmTR CONGRESS. 

JOHN F. CEANLER was born in the City of New York in 182G. In 1859 
and 18G0 ho was a memberof the General Assembly of New York. In 1863 he was 
elected a Representative from New York to the Tliirty-Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 64, 156, 337, 338, 571, 

J. FRANCISCO CHAVES was born in New Mexico in 1833. He studied 
medicine in New York, and subsequently devoted several years to mercantile 
pursuits and cattle-raising. In 1861 he entered the military service as Major of 
the First New Mexico Infantry, and after seeing much active service was mus- 
tered out as Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1865 he was elected a Delegate from New 
Mexico to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. 

DANIEL CLARK was born in Stratham, New Hampshire, October 24, 1809. 
He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1834, and was admitted to the bar in 
1837. From 1843 to 1857 he was repeatedly a member of the New Hampshire 
Legislature. In 1857 he was elected a Senator in Congress from New Hamp- 
sliire, and in 1861 he was re-elected for the term ending in 1867. At the close 
of the first session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress he resigned his seat in the Sen- 
ate, having been "appointed U. S. District Judge for New Hampshire^— 28, 201, 
203, 388, 453, 455, 456, 479. 

READER W. CLARKE was born in Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio, May 
18, 1813. He learned the art of printing, but subsequently studied law, and was 
admitted to the bar in 1836. In 1840 and 1841 he was a member of the Ohio 
liCgislature. He was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention of 1844, and was 
a Presidential Elector in the same year. For six years succeeding 1846 he held 
the oiEce of Clerk of the Courts of Clermont Coimty. He was a delegate to the 
Chicago Convention of 1860. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from 
Ohio to the Tliirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

SIDNEY CLARKE was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, October 16, 1831. 
He adopted the profession of an editor, and published the " Southbridge Press." 
He emigrated to Kansas in 1858, and settled in Lawrence. In 1863 he was a 
member of the Kansas Legislature. He served during the rebellion as Captain 
of Volimteers, and Assistant Provost Marshal General for Kansas, Nebraska, 
Colorado, and Dakota. In 1864 he was elected the Representative from Kansas 
to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth. — 88. 

AMASA COBB was born in Crawford County, Illinois, September 37, 1823. 
He emigrated to Wisconsin Territory in 1843, and engaged in the lead-mining 
business. He served as a private in the Mexican War, and at the close of this 
ecr\-ice he commenced the practice of law. He served as District Attorney, State 
Senator, and Adjutant-General of Wisconsin. He was subsequently a member 
of the State Legislature, and was chosen Speaker. He was Colonel of the Fifth 
Wisconsin Regiment in the war, and was elected a Representative from Wis- 
consin to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. 

ALEXANDER H. COFFROTH was born in Somerset, Pennsylvania, 
May 18, 1838. He commenced the practice of law in 1851. He was a delegate 
to the Charleston Convention in 1860, and was elected a Representative to the 
Thirty-Eighth Congress. He appeared as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress, but his seat was successfully contested by William H. Koontz. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IMDEX. 585 

SCHUYLER COLFAX was born in New York City, March 23, 1823. IIo 
became a printer, and settled in Indiana, 1830. Ho was for many years editor 
and publisher of tlio " South Bend llcfrjstcr." In 1850 he was a member of tho 
Indiana Constitutional Convention, IIo was a dele^^ato and secretary of tho 
Wliig National Conventions of 1818 and 1852. He was elected a Representative 
from Indiana to the Thirty-Fourth Congress, and has been a member by ro-elec- 
tion of each succeedinj? Congress. He was elected Speaker of the Thirty-Eighth 
Congress, and was re-elected to the same office in the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth 
Congresses.— 12, 20, 289, 306, 363, 501, 574, 570. 

ROSCOE CONKLING, son of Alfred Conkling, a member of the Seventeenth 
Congrt?ss, was born at Albany, in 1828. Having entered the profession of law, he 
successively held tho offices of of District Attorney for Oneida County and Mayor 
of Utica. In 1859 he took his seat as a member of the Thirty-Sixth Congress 
from New York, and remained a Representative in Congress by successive re- 
elections imtil the 4th of March, 18G7, when he entered the United States Senate 
as the successor of Ii-a Harris.— 628, 330, 348, 363, 481, 513, 514. 

JOHN CONNESS was born in Ireland in 1822, and came to America when 
thirteen years of age. He was an early emigrant to California, where he en- 
gaged in mercantile and mining pursuits. In 1852 he was elected to the State 
Legislature, and served in that capacity for a series of years. In 1863 he was 
elected United States Senator fi'om California for the term ending in 1869.— 
540. 

BURTON C. COOK was born in Monroe County, New York, May 11, 1819. 
He received a collegiate education, and entered upon the profession of law in 
Illinois. After serving as State Attorney for sis years, he was elected to the 
State Senate in 1852, and was a member of that body until 1860. In 1864 he 
was elected a Representative from Illinois to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and 
was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.— 223, 350,^51. 

EDMUND COOPER was born in Maury County, Tennessee. He gradu- 
ated at the Harvard Law School, and entered upon the practice of law at Colum- 
bia, and afterwards at Shclbyville, Tennessee. He has served in the Tennessee 
Legislature, and was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1865. In 
August, 1865, he was elected a Representative from Tennessee to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, but was not admitted until near the close of the first session. 
'While waiting at Washington to be admitted to Congress, he acted as Private 
Secretary to President Johnson. In November, 1867, he was appointed by the 
President to act as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. 

EDGAR COWAN was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Sep- 
tember 19, 1815. He graduated at Franklin College, Ohio, in 1839. Having 
been at dilFerent times clerk, boat-builder, schoolmaster, and student of medicine, 
he studied law and practiced the profession until 1861, when he was elected 
United States Senator from Pennsylvania for the term ending 1867. He was 
succeeded by Simon Cameron.— 96, 100, 133, 135, 195, 216, 273, 429, 460, 487, 
489, 490, 535, 564. 

AARON H. CRAGIN was born in Weston, Vermont, February 3, 1821. He 
studied law in Albany, New I'ork, and in 1847 removed to Lebanon, New Hamp- 
shire, where he practiced his profession. From 1852 to 1855 he was a member 



5S6 THIBTY-JiljYTR COJfGRESS. 

of the New Ilauipslaire Legislature. He was a Representative from New Hamp- 
shire in the Thirty-Fifth and Thirty-Sixth Congresses. In 18G5 he entered the 
Senate of the United States for the term ending in 1871. 

JOHN A. J. CRESWELL was born in Port Deposit, Marjdand, November 
18, 1828. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1848, and was admitted to the 
bar in 1850. He was successively a member of the Maryland House of Dele- 
gates, Assistant Adjutant-General for the State and a Representative in the 
Thirty-Eighth Congress. In 1865 he was chosen a United States Senator for 
the imexpired term of T. H. Hicks, deceased. — 134, 136. 

SHELBY M. CULLOM was born in Wayne County, Kentucky, November 
27, 1829, and was removed to Illinois, when scarcely a year old, by his parents, 
who settled in Tazewell County. He spent two years as a student at the Mount 
Morris Seminary. Having studied law, he entered upon the practice of his pro- 
fession in Springfield, and was immediately elected City Attorney. In 1856 he 
was elected to the State Legislature, and was re-elected in 1860, and chosen 
Speaker of the House. In 1856 was a Fillmore Elector for the State at large. 
In 1864 lie was elected a Representative from Illinois to the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress. In 1866 he was re-elected by more than double his former majority. — 
516. 

CHARLES V. CULVER was bom m Logan, Ohio, September 6, 1830. Hav- 
ing settled in Western Pennsylvania, he engaged in business pursuits, and 
especially in banking. He was largely concerned in railroads and other pub- 
lic enterprises. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from the Twentieth 
District of Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded in the 
Fortieth Congress by Dar^\in A. Finney. — 575. 

WILLIAM A. DARLING was born in Newark, New Jersey, December 17, 
1817. He shortly after settled in New York City, where he received a commer- 
cial education, and devoted himself to the wholesale business. He became a 
Director of the Mercantile Library Association, and served eleven years as officer 
and private of the Seventh Regiment, National Guard. From 1847 to 1854 he 
Vi'as Deputy Receiver of Taxes for New York City. In 1860 he was a Presiden- 
tial Elector, and in 1863 and 1864 was President of the Union and Republican 
Organization of New York City. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from 
New York to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was nominated for the Fortieth 
Congress, and was defeated by Fernando Wood by IfiOO majority, in a District 
gi\-ing Hoffman (Dem.) for Governor nearly 6000 majority. — 81. 

GARRETT DA VIS was born at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, September 10, 
1801. Having received an English and classical education, he studied law, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1823. With his professional labors he joined a con- 
siderable attention to agricultural pursuits. In 1833 he was elected to the Leg- 
islature, and was twice re-elected. He was a member of the State Constitutional 
Convention in 1839. From the latter year to 1847 he was in Congress, repre- 
senting the District in which Henry Clay resided, of whom he was a warm per- 
sonal and political friend. In 1861 he was elected a Senator in Congress from 
Kentucky, and was re-elected in 1867.— 24, 136, 171, 199, 208, 243, 287, 296, 430, 
4.58, 460, 484, 493, 498, 531, 533, 534, 548, 572. 

THOMAS T. DAVIS was born in Middleburv, Vermont, August 22, 1810. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IMDEX. 587 

Having removed to the State of New York, be graduated at Hamilton College in 
1831, and was admitted to tlio bar in Syracuse in 1833. He bas devoted mucb at- 
tention to business relating to railroads, nianulactures, and mining. In 1803 be 
was elected a Representative from New York to tbe Tliirty-Eigbtb Congress, and 
was re-elected to the Tbirty-Nintb. lie was succeeded in tbe Fortietb Congress 
by Dennis McCarthy —03, 361. 

HENRY L. DAWES was bom in Cummington, Massachusetts, October 80, 
1816. Having graduated at Yale College in 1839, be engaged successively in 
school-teaching, editing a newspaper, and practicing law. From 1848 to 1853 
be was a member of tbe Legislature of Massachusetts. In 1853 he was chosen 
District Attorney for the Western District of tbe State, and held the office until 
•185G, when be was elected a Representative from Massachusetts to the Thirty- 
Fifth Congress. He has been a member of every subsequent Congress, including 
the Fortieth.— 30, 478. 

JOHN L. DA WBON was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, February 7, 
1813. He was educated at Washington College, adopted the profession of law, 
and was, in 1845, appointed by President Polk United States Attorney for the 
Western District of Pennsylvania. Since 1844 he bas been a member of most 
of the Democratic National Conventions. In 1850 be was elected a Representa- 
tive to the Thirty-Second Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Third, in 
which he served as Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, and was tbe 
author of the Homestead Bill which passed in 1854. In 1855 be was appointed 
by President Pierce Governor of Kansas, but declined the office. In 1802 he was 
elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and 
was re-elected to the Thirty -Ninth. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress 
by John Covode. — 144, 505. 

JOSEPH H. DEFREES was born in White County, Tennessee, May 13, 
1813. When eight years old be removed to Piqua, Ohio, and a few years after, 
be entered a printing-office, in which he obtained the most of his early educa- 
tion. In 1831 he estabbshed a newspaper in South Bend, Indiana, and two years 
afte'r removed to Goshen, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits. In 1836 he 
was elected Sheriff of Elkhart Coimty. In 1849 he was elected to the House of 
Representatives of Indiana, and in 1850 to the State Senate. In 1864 he was 
elected a Representative from Indiana to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His 
successor in tbe Fortieth Congress is WUliam Williams. 

COLUMBUS DELANO was born in Shorebam, Vermont, in 1809. When 
eight years old be removed to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he studied law and 
was admitted to tbe bar in 1831. In 1844 he was elected a Representative from 
Ohio to tbe Twenty-Ninth Congress. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago 
Convention. In 1861 be was appointed Commissary General of Ohio. Two 
years after be was a member of the Ohio Legislature. In 1864 be was a dele 
gate to the Baltimore Repubbcan Convention, and was in the same year 
elected a Representative from Ohio to the Tbirty-Nmth Congress. His successor 
in tbe Fortieth Congress is George W. Morgcm.—236, 285 539, 564. 

HENRY C. DEMING was born in Connecticut. He graduated at Yale 
College in 1836, and at the Harvard Law School in 1838. He bad been a 
member of the Lower House and Senate of Connecticut, and for six years Mayor 
of Hartford, when in 1861 he went into the war as Colonel of tbe Twelfth Con- 



588 THIRTY-JS^mTH COJ^GBESS. 

necticut Rco-imcnt. He participated in the capture of New Orleans, and was 
Mayor of that city until 1803, when he returned to his native State, and was 
soon after elected a Representative in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected in 1865. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Ricliard D. 
Hubbard— ^1. 

CHARLES DENISON was born in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, Janu- 
ary 23, 1818. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1839, and entered the 
profession of law. In 18G3 he was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania 
to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864. He was succeeded 
in the Fortieth Congress by Oeorge W. Woodward. 

ARTHUR A. DENNY was born in Indiana, in 1822, and removed in boy- 
hood to Illinois. In 1851 he removed to Washington Territory, and was a 
member of the Territorial Legislature from 1853 to 18G1. He was four years 
Register of the Laud OflBce at Olympia, and was subsequently elected a Dele- 
gate from Washington Territory to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was suc- 
ceeded by Alvan Flanders in the Fortieth Congress. 

JAMES DIXON was born in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1814. He graduated 
at Williams' College in 1834, and soon after entered upon the practice of law. 
In 1837 he was elected to the Legislature of Connecticut, and was twice re- 
elected. He was a Representative in Congress from Connecticut from 1845 to 
1849. In the latter year he was elected to the State Senate. He was elected 
L^nited States Senator from Connecticut in 1857, and was re-elected in 1863. — 
423, 425, 495, 548. 

NATHAN F. DIXON, son of a Senator of the same name, was born in 
Westerly, Rhode Island, May 1, 1812, and graduated at Brown University in 
1833. After attending the Law Schools at New Haven and Cambridge, he was 
admitted to the bar in 1837. From 1840 to 1849 he was a member of the Gen- 
eral Assembly of Rhode Island, and after having served in'the Thirty-First Con- 
gress, was again elected to the Legislature. In 1863 he was elected a Repre- 
sentative from Rhode Island to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and entered upon his 
second Congressional term in 1865. He was in 1866 re-elected to the Fortieth 
Congress. 

WILLIAJI E. DODGE was born in Hartford, Connecticut, September 4, 
1805. Early in life he went to New York City, where he engaged actively in 
business. He has been forty years at the head of one of the most extensive 
manufacturing and importing establishments in the country. He was many 
years President of the National Temperance Society, and has long been a promi- 
nent promoter of benevolent enterprises in New York City. Having established 
his right to the seat held by James Brooks, he was admitted a member of the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress in the spring of 18G6. He was succeeded by James 
Brooks in the Fortieth Congress. — 511, 568. 

IGNATIUS DONNELLY was born in Philadelphia, November 3, 1831, and 
was educated at the Central High School of his native city. He studied law 
and was admitted to the bar in 1853. He emigrated to Minnesota in 1857, and 
two years after was elected Lieutenant Governor of that State, and held the 
oflice two terms. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from Minnesota to 



BIOGRAPHICAL IMDEX. 589 

tlie Thirty-Eightli Congress, and was re-elected to tlic Thirty-Nintli and Fortietli 
Congresses.— 145, 15G, 3o3, 507, 238, 553. 

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE was born in Hampton, New York, January 3, 
1815. Ho graduated at Geneva College in 1834, became a lawyer, and for several 
years lield the office of District Attorney for Wyoming County. In 1851 bo 
removed to Wisconsin, and two years after was elected Judge of the First 
Judicial Circuit of that State. In 1857 he was elected a United States Senator 
from Wisconsin, and in 18G3 was re-elected for the term ending in 18G0.— 28, 38, 
285, 408, 431, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 462, 495, 501, 531, 533, 533, 541, 564. 

JOHN F. DRIGGS was born in Kinderhook, New York, March 8, 1813. He 
served an aiiprenticeship in the sash and door-making business, and soon after 
set up as a master mechanic in New I'ork City. Ho took no part in politics 
until 184-1, when ho assisted in the reform movement by which James Harper 
was elected Mayor of New York. He was soon after appointed Superintendent 
of Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. In 1856 he removed to East Saginaw, 
Michigan, and was two years after elected President of that town. In 1859 he 
was elected to the Michigan Legislature. Two years after he was appointed 
Register at the Land Office for the Sagmaw District, and held the office until 
his election as a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-Eighth Congress 
in 1862. He was returned by increased majorities to the Thirty-Ninth and 
Fortieth Congresses. 

EBENEZER DUMONT was born in Vevay, Indiana, November 23, 1814. 
He was educated at the Indiana University, and adopted the profession of law. 
In 1838 he was elected a member of the Indiana Legislature, and from 1839 to 
1845 held the office of County Treasurer. He served in the Mexican War as a 
Lieutenant Colonel, and was subsequently a member of the State Legislature, a 
Presidential Elector, and President of the State Bank. At the breaking out of 
the rebellicn, he was appointed Colonel of the Seventh Regiment of Indiana 
Volunteers, and fought in the battle of Philippi, in West Virginia. Ha%ing 
been promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, he commanded a brigade at the 
battle of Murfreesboro. H^ was subsequently assigned to the military command 
of Nashville, and from that place led an expedition against John Morgan, cap- 
turing nearly all of his command. In 1862, while yet in the army, he was 
elected a Representative from Indiana to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected in 1864. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is John Coburn. 

EPHRAIM R. ECKLEY was born in JeflFerson County, Ohio, December 9, 
1812, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. From 1843 to 1853 he served in the 
House of Representatives and in the Senate of Ohio. In the Civil War he was 
Colonel of the Twenty-Sixth and Eightieth Regiments of Ohio Volunteers. He 
fought in several battles, and at Corinth commanded a brigade. In 1862 he 
was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and 
was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth. — 147. 

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS was born in Richmond, Vermont, February 1, 
1828, and was admitted to the bar in 1849. In 1854 he entered the Vennout 
Legislature, and served three years as Speaker. In 1861 and 1862 he served in 
the State Senate, and was the Presiding Officer of that body. He was appointed 
to the vacancy in the United States Senate occasioned by the death of Solomon 
Foot, and entered upon the duties of that position in April, 1866.— 559, 560. 



59-0 THIRTY-KIKTH COiN'GBESS. 

BENJAMIN EGGLESTON was born in Corinth, New York, January 3, 
1816. He removed to Ohio in 1831, and gave his attention to ccmmercial pur- 
suits. He has been identified with many important public enterprises. He was 
for muny years Chairman of the Board of Public Works of Cincinnati, and 
President of the City Council. He was for some years a member of the State 
Legislature. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Convention, and was a 
Presidential Elector in the election of that year. In 1864 he was elected a 
Eepresentative from Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 
1866. 

CHARLES A. ELDRIDGE was born at Bridport, Vermont, February 27, 
1821. He removed to the State of New York, where he was admitted to the 
bar in 1846. In 1848 he removed to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and served in the 
Senate of that State in 1854 and 1855. In 1862 he was elected a Representative 
from Wisconsin to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was returned to the Thirty- 
Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 226, 242, 355, 419, 441, 476, 507, 539, 546. 

THOMAS D. ELIOT was born in Boston, March 20, 1808. Having gradu- 
ated at Columbia College, Washington, in 1825, he settled as a lawyer in New 
Bedford. Having served in both branches of the Massachusetts Legislature, he 
first entered Congress in 1855 for an unexpired term. In 1858 he was elected a 
Representative from Massachusetts to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and has been 
returned to every succeeding Congress, including the Fortieth. — 31, 95, 138, 157 
295, 290, 306, 347, 443. 

JOHN F. FARNSWORTH was born of New England parentage, in Eaton, 
Lower Canada, March 27, 1820, but was early removed to the Territory of 
Michigan. In 1843 he settled in St. Charles, Illinois, and entered upon the j)rac- 
tice of law. In 1846 he left the Democratic Party with which he had acted, and 
joined the " Liberty Party." In 1856 and again in 1858 he was elected to Con- 
gress, from what was then known as the Chicago District. In 1861 he raised 
the Eighth Illinois Cavalry Regiment, of which he was Colonel until his promo- 
tion to the rank of Brigadier General. The severe, service in which he was 
engaged in the Peninsular Campaign brought on a disability which necessitated 
his resignation. In the fall of 1862 he was elected a Representative from Illinois 
to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864 and 1866, on both 
occasions receiving the largest majorities given by any district in the United 
States.— 61, 833, 339, 448, 519, 537. 

JOHN H. FARQUHAR was bom in Frederick County, Maryland, December 
20, 1818. With his widowed mother he removed to Indiana in 1833, and was 
employed as civil engineer upon some of the earliest public improvements of the 
State. In 1841 he was elected Secretary of the Indiana Senate. In 1843 he was 
Chief Clerk of the Indiana House of Representatives, and was the same year 
admitted to the bar in Brookfield. In 1844 he was a delegate to the National 
Convention which nominated Henry Clay. In 1852 he was candidate for Presi- 
dential Elector on the Scott ticket, and in 1860 on the Lincoln ticket. In 1861 
he was commissioned a Captain in the Nineteenth United States Infantry, and 
was detailed as mustering and disbursing officer for Indiana. In 1864 he was 
elected a Representative from Indiana to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was 
succeeded by William 8. Holman in the Fortieth Congress. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 591 

THOMAS W. FERRY was born in Mackinac, Micliiffan, June 1, 1837. He 
lias "been occupied extensively in the lumber trade and in banking. In 1850 lie 
was elected to the House of Representatives of Micliigan, and in 1850 to the 
State Senate. For eight years he wao an efficient member of the Republican 
State Committee, and was a delegate and a Vice-President of the Chicago Con- 
vention of 18G0. In 1SG4 he was elected a Representative from Michigan to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 18GG. 

WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN was born at Boscawen, New Hampshire, 
October IG, 18G0. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1 823, and in 1837 entered 
upon the practice of law in Portland, Maine. In 1833 he was a delegate to the 
Convention which nominated Henry Clay. In the same year he was elected to 
the Maine Legislature, and again in 1840. In 1841 he was elected a Represen- 
tative in Congress, and declined a re-election. In 1845, 184G, and 1853 he served 
his fellow citizens in the State Legislature. In 1853 ho was elected a United 
States Senator from Maine, and was re-elected in 1859. Upon the resignation 
of Mr. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, in July, 18G4, he was appointed to 
that office. On the 4th of March following he resigned his seat in the Cabinet, 
and re-entered the United States Senate, to which he had been elected for the 
term ending in 1871. In the Senate he has held the important positions of 
Chairman of the Finance Committee and of the Joint Committee on Reconstruc- 
tion. He has received the degree of LL.D. from Bowdoin College and Harvard 
University— 27, 43, 13G, 271, 224, 373, 377, 380, 394, 412, 419, 421, 432, 453, 456, 
540. 

WILLIAM E. FINCH was born in Ohio in 1822, and at the age of twenty- 
one was admitted to the bar. In 1851 he was elected to the State Senate. In 
the following year he was a delegate to the Convention which nominated Gen- 
eral Scott foi^President. In 1861 he was again elected a State Senator. In 1863 
he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and 
was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth. He was succeeded by PMladelph Van 
Trump in the Fortieth Congress. — 437, 463, 476, 519. 

(JEORGE G. FOGG was a newspaper editor, of New Hampshire, until his 
appointment by President Lincoha as United States Minister Resident for Switzer- 
land. He made a considerable fortune while there by investing liis salary in 
United States Securities when they were very low in Europe. At the opening 
of the second session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress he took his seat in the Sen- 
ate, having been appointed to fill the unexpired term of Daniel Clark, which 
closed on the 4th of March, 1867. He was succeeded by James W. Patterson. 

SOLOMON FOOT was born in Cornwall, Vermont, November 19, 1802, and 
graduated at Middlebury College in 1826. Having occupied some years in 
teaching, he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1831. He was for 
many years a member of the State Legislature of Vermont, and State Attorney. 
From 18.43 to 1847 he was a Representative in Congress. In 1851 he was elected 
a Senator in Congress from Vermont, was re-elected in 1857, and again in 1863. 
For several years he held the office of President pro tcin. of the Senate. He died 
in Wasliington, March 28, 1806.— 253, 269. 

LAFAYETTE S. FOSTER, a lineal descendant of Miles Standish, was born 
in Franklin, Connecticut, November 22, 1806. In 1838 he graduated at Brown 



692 THIETY-MIJ^TH COJ^GBESS. 

University, Mliicli lionored Mm witli the degree of LL.D. in 1850. He wag 
admitted to the bar in 1831. He was sis times a member of the Connecticut 
Leo-islature, and two years Mayor of the city of ISforwich. In 1855 he was elected 
a United States Senator for Connecticut, and was re-elected in 18G3. He was 
chosen President pro tern, of the Senate at the extra session in 18G5, and by 
the elevation of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency became Acting Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States, His service of twelve years in the Senate closed 
March 4, 18G7, when he was succeeded by Orris S. Ferry.— 23, 137, 187, 288, 306, 
497, 576. 

JOSEPH S. FOWLER was born near Steubenvile, Ohio. He was left depend- 
ent on his own resources when very young, but by energy and perseverance suc- 
ceeded in attaining a thorough collegiate education. Having adojited the pro- 
fession of teaching, he was elected to a college Professorship of Mathematics in 
Tennessee. He was subsequently for some years at the head of a flourishing 
seminary of learning near Nashville. He was conspicuous for his staunch 
loyalty, and when the State Government passed out of the hands of the rebels 
he was elected to the important office of Comptroller of Tennessee. In 1805 he 
was elected a Senator in Congress from Tennessee, but with his colleagues was 
not admitted to a seat until near the close of the first session of the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress. — 178. 

FPtEDERICK T, FRELINGHUTSEN was born at Millstone, New Jersey, 
August 4, 1817. His grandfather, of the same name, was a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress, and was a United States Senator from 1793 to 1796. Young 
Frederick having been left an orphan at an early age was adopted and reared by 
his uncle, Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen. He graduated at Rutgers College, and 
studied law. He was appointed Attorney General of New Jersey in 1861, and 
was re-appointcd in 1866. On the 24th of January, 1867, he took his seat as a 
United States Senator from New Jersey having been elected for the unexpired 
term of William Wright, deceased, which will end March 4, 1869.— 492, 497. 

JAJMES A. GARFIELD was born in Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, No. 
vember 19, 1881. He graduated at Williams College, Massachusetts, in 1856, 
and was for some years principal of a flourishing Seminary of learning at Hiram, 
Ohio. In 1859 and 1860 he was a member of the Ohio Senate. In 
1861 he entered the army as Colonel of the Forty-Second Regiment of 
Ohio Volunteers, and in the following year was commissioned a Brigadier 
General. He served as Chief of Staff to General Rosecrans. He fought at the 
battles of Shiloh, Corinth, and Chicamauga. For gallant service in the last, 
named battle he was promoted to the rank of Major General. In 1862 he was 
elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 144, 438, 450, 521, 540, 
538, 553, 557. 

ADAM J. GL08SBRENNEB was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, August 
31, 1810. He was apprenticed at an early age to the printing-business. When 
seventeen years of age he journeyed westward, and became foreman in the office 
of the " Ohio Monitor," and afterwards of the " Western Telegraph." In 1829 
he returned to Pennsylvania and settled in York, and there published the " York 
Gazette." In 1849 he was elected Sergeant-at-arms of the House of Represent- 
atives for the Thirty-First Congress, and held the same office through the four 
following Congressional terms. In 1861 he was private secretary to President 



BIOQRAPUiaiL IJ^DEX. 603 

Buclianan. In 1864 lie was elected a Kepresentative from Pennsylvania to the 

Thirty-Ninth Congress. 

CUARLES GOOD TEAR was born in Schoharie County, New York, April 
26, 1805. He graduated at Union College in 1824, and entered upon the prac- 
tice of law in 1827. In 1839 he was elected to the ISfew York Legislature, and in 
1841 was appointed First Judge of Schoharie County. In 1845 he was elected 
a Representative to the Twenty-Ninth Congress, and twenty years after was 
elected to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. During the interval ho devoted his 
attention to the business of banking. IBs successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
John V. L. Pruyn. 

HENRY GRIDER was born in Kentucky, July IG, 1796. He was a pri- 
vate in the last war with England. He subsequently divided his attention 
between agriculture and law. In 1827 and 1831 he was elected to the Legisla- 
ture of Kentucky, and in 1833 to the State Senate. As early as 1843 he was 
elected a Representative to Congress from Kentucky and held the position until 
1847. He was re-elected to the Thirty-Seventh. Thirty-Eighth, and Thirty-Ninth 
Congresses. He died before the expiration of the last term for which h.o was 
elected.— 417, 570. 

JAJNIES W. GRIMES was born in Decring, New Hampshire, October 16, 
1816. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1836, and soon after removed to 
Iowa, where he was, in 1838, elected to the first Territorial Legislature. From 
1854 to 1858 he was Governor of Iowa. In 1859 he was elected a Senator in 
Congress, and was in 1865 elected for a second term, which will end in 1871. In 
1865 he received the degree of LL.D. from Iowa College. He was a delegate to 
the Peace Congress of 1861. For a number of years he has been Chairman of 
the Committee on Naval Affairs. 

JOSIAH B. GRINNELL was born in New Haven, Vermont, December 23, 
1821 . He received a collegiate and theological education. In 1855, he went to 
Iowa, where he turned his attention to farming, and became the most extensive 
wool-grower in the State. He was four years a member of the Iowa Senate, 
and two years a special agent for the General Post Office. In 1862 he was 
elected a Representative from Iowa to the Thirty -Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth. He was succeeded by William Loughridgc in 
the Fortieth Congress.— 70, 153, 507, 572, 573, 574. 

JOHN A. GRISWOLD was bom in Rensselaer County, New York, in 1822. 
He has been engaged in the iron trade and business] of banking. He was 
once Mayor of the City of Troy. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from 
New York to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, was re-elected in 1864, and again in 
1866.— 528. 

JAMES G UTIIRIE was bom near Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1795. Having 
spent some years in trading with New Orleans as the owner of flatboats, he 
settled in Louisville as a lawyer, at the age of twenty-five. He was at one 
time shot by a political opponent, and was in consequence laid up for three 
years. He served nine years in the State Legislature and six years in the Ken- 
tucky Senate. He subsequently took an active part in the banking business, and 
was President of the Nashville and Louisville Railroad. He was President of 
the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1851. In 1853 he became Secretary 
38 



594 THIRTY-KIKTH COJ^GEESS. 

of the Treasury under President Pierce. He was a delegate to tlie Chicago 
Convention of 1804. In 1805 lie was elected United States Senator from Ken- 
tucky for the term ending in 1871.— 40, 134, IGO, 210, 214. 

ROBERT S. HALE was born in Chelsea, Vermont, September 24, 1822, and 
graduated at the University of Vermont in 1842. He settled for the practice 
of law at Elizabethtown, New York. He subsequently held the position of 
Judge of Essex County, Regent of the University of New York, and Presidential 
Elector. In 1804 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Orange Ferris. — 
83, 372. 

AABON IIABDING was born in Greene Coimty, Kentucky. He was ad- 
mitted to the bar in 1833. He was elected to the Kentucky Legislature in 1840. 
In 1801 he was elected a Representative from Kentucky to the Thirty-Seventh 
Congress and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty -Ninth Congresses. 
His successor in the Fortieth Congress is J. Proctor Knott. — 301, 402. 

ABNER C. HARDING was born in East Hampton, Connecticut, February 
10, 1S07. He practiced law in the State of New York, and subsequently in 
Illinois. He was for many years engaged extensively in farming and railroad 
management. In 1848 he was a member of the Illinois Constitutional Conven- 
tion, and subsequently of the Legislature. In 1802 he enlisted as a private in 
the Eighty-Third Illinois Infantry, and became its Colonel. He was promoted 
to the rank of Brigadier General. In 1804 he was elected a Representative from 
Illinois to the Thirty-Ninth Crngress, and was re-elected in 1800. — 522. 

BES'JAMm Q. RABBIS was born in Maryland, December 13, 1800. He 
was for a time a student of Yale College, and afterwards studied at the Cam- 
bridge Law School. He returned to his native State and engaged in the 
practice of law and agriculture. He served for several years in the Maryland 
House of Delegates. In 1803, and again in 1805, he was elected a Representative 
to Congress from Maryland. In May, 1805, he was arrested and tried by court- 
martial for violating the Fifty-Sixth Article of War, and was declared guilty ; 
but the President ordered the sentence of the court to be remitted in full. He 
was'succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Frederick Stone. 

IRA HARRIS was born in Charleston, New York, May 31, 1803. He grad- 
uated at Union College in 1824, and soon after entered upon the practice of law 
in Albany, and for many years devoted attention exclusively to his profession. 
In 1844 he was elected to the New York Legislature, and served two tei-ms. In 
1840 he was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, and was the 
game year elected to the State Senate. In 1847 he was elected Judge of the 
Supreme Court, and held the office twelve years. In 1801 he was elected a Sen- 
ator in Congress from New York for the term ending in 1807, when he was suc- 
ceeded by Roscoe Conkling. 

ROSWELL HART was born in Rochester, New York, in 1821. He gradu- 
ated at Yale College in 1843, and was admitted to the bar in 1847, but entered 
immediately upon mercantile pursuits. In 1804 he was elected a Representative 
from New York to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth 
Congress is Lewis Selye. 

ISAAC R. HAWKINS was born in Maury County, Tennessee, May 16, 
1818. He was engaged in agricultural pursuits until twenty -two years of ago. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 595 

wlien he commenced the study of law. In 1843 he settled, for the practice of 
law, in Huntington, Tennessee, where he now resides. He served as a Lieuten- 
ant in the Jlexican War. In 18G0 he was elected to the Legislature of Tennessee. 
He was a delegate to the Peace Congress of 18G1, and in the spring and summer 
of that year was actively engaged in making speeches throughout his State 
against secession. In September, 1862, he entered the army as Lieutenant-Col- 
onel of the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry. In 18G4 he was captured by the enemy 
at Union City, Tennessee, and was imprisoned at Mobile and Macon. He was 
one of the fifty officers placed by the rebels under fire of the Federal force off 
Charleston. Ha\ing been exchanged, he commanded the cavalry force in West- 
ern Kentucky until the close of the war. In August, 1865, he was elefted a 
Representative from Tennessee to the Thirty-Nin^h Congress, and was re-elected 
to the Fortieth Congress. 

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was born in Delaware, Ohio, October 4, 1822. 
He graduated at Kenyon College, and subsequently at the Cambridge Law 
School. He was City Solicitor for Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861. He went into 
the army at the opening of the war as Major of the Twenty-Third Ohio Volun- 
teers, and reached the rank of Brigadier General. In 1864 he was elected a 
Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was, in 1866, re- 
elected to the Fortieth Congress, but ha\'ing been elected Governor of Ohio in 
1867, he resigned his seat in Congress, and was succeeded by Samuel F. Carey. 

JAMES H. D. HENDERSON was born in Livingston County, Kentucky, 
July 23, 1810. In 1817 he removed with his parents to Missouri, and learned 
the printing business in Jefferson City. He subsequently published a weekly 
newspaper at Bowling Green, Missouri. At the age of twenty-five he entered 
the ministry of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and after preaching iox a 
time in Missouri, he accepted the pastoral charge of a congregation in Pennsyl- 
vania. Having held this position eight years, he resigned in 1851, and soon 
after emigrated to Oregon. There he engaged in agricultural pursuits, but was 
active in preaching and lecturing against slavery, intemperance, gambling, and 
other popular vices. He was elected to the office of Superintendent of Common 
Schools for Oregon. In 1864 he was elected the Representative from Oregon to 
the Thitry-Ninth Congress, He was succeeded by Rufus Mallory, 

JOHN B. HENDERSON was bom in Virginia, November 16, 1826, and at 
ten years of age removed with his parents to Missouri. He taught school as a 
means of support while attaining an academical education. He studied law, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1848. He was subsequently twice elected to the 
Missouri Legislature. In 1856 he was a Democratic Presidential Elector, and 
was a delegate to the Charleston Convention of 1860. On the expulsion of 
Trusten Polk from the United States Senate, he was appointed to fill the 
vacancy. In 1863 he was elected for the full term, ending in 1869.— 161, 377, 
882, 386, 888, 461, 530, 531, 533,- 534, 559. 

THOMAS A. HENDBICKS was bom in Muskingum Coimty, Ohio, Sep- 
tember 7, 1819. He was educated at Sojith Hanover College. He studied law 
at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and settled in Indiana for the practice of his 
profession. In 1848 he served in the State Legislature, and was a prominent 
member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850. In 1851 he was 
elected a Representative in Congress from Indiana, and served two terms. In 



596 THIBTr-^''IJ^TH COJfGBESS. 

1855 be was appointed Commissioner of the General Land Ofl5ce, and held tliat 
office until his resi^ation in 1859. In 1860 he was the Democratic candidate 
for Governor of Indiana, and was defeated by Henry S. Lane. In 1863 be was 
elected United States Senator from Indiana, for the term ending in 1869. — 28, 108, 
136, 211, 218, 296, 306, 395, 432, 455, 459, 460, 491, 498, 531, 532, 533, 535, 548. 

WILLIAM HIGBY was bom in Essex County, New York, August 18, 1813. 
He graduated at the University of Vermont in 1840, and practiced law in New 
York until 1850, when be removed to California. Three years after he was 
elected District Attorney of Cavaleras Covmty, and held the office until 1859. 
He MifiB subsequently a member of the State Senate. In 1863 be was elected a 
Representative from California to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was succes- 
sively re-elected to the Thirty -Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. — 356, 357, 358, 575, 
510. 

RALPH HILL was born in Trumbull County, Ohio, October 13, 1827, and 
was left in early life entirely dependent upon his own exertions. After taking 
an academical course of study, he attended the New York State and National 
Law School at Ballston Spa, where he graduated to the degree of LL.B., hi 1851. 
In the following year he settled in the practice of his profession at Columbus, 
Indiana. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Indiana to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is Morton C. Himter. — 
356. 

ELIJAH HI8E was born in Pennsylvania, and removed in early life to 
Lexington, Kentucky. Having studied law, he established himself in Russell- 
ville, Kentucky, for the practice of his profession. He served as member of the 
State Legislature and a Judge of the Superior Court of Kentucky. He was long 
regarded as one of the most eloquent and effective political speakers of Ken- 
tucky. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from Kentucky to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress. In May, 1867, he was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress, and 
a few days after committed suicide, alleging the gloomy political prospects of 
the country as a reason for the act. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
Jacob S. Galladay.— 511, 521. 

PHINEAS W. HITCHCOCK was born in New Lebanon, New York, No- 
vember 30, 1831. Having graduated at WUliams College, Massachusetts, in 
1855, he studied law, and emigrated to Nebraska Territory in 1857. In 1861 he 
was appointed by President Lincoln Marshal of the Territory, and held this 
office imtil his election as a Delegate from Nebraska to the Thirty-Niuth 
Congress. 

JOHN HOOAN was born in Ireland, January 2, 1805, and came with his 
father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1817. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker, 
and obtained the rudiments of education in the Asbury Sunday School. In 1826 
he removed to Illinois, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits. In 1830 he 
was a member of the State Legislature, in 1838 Commissioner of the Board of 
Public Works, and in 1841 Register of the Land Office by appointment of Presi- 
dent Harrison. He removed to St. Louis, and engaged in mercantile pursuits 
and banking. In 1857 he was appointed by President Buchanan Postmaster at 
St. Louis. In 1804 he was elected a Representative to Congress from Missouri, 
and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by WiUiam A. Pile. 



BIOGRAPHICAL imEX. 507 

E. D. nOLBROOK was born in Elyria, Oliio, in 1836. Having received a 
common-school education, ho studied huv, and emigrated to Idaho. In 18C4 he 
was elected the Delegate from that Territory to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and 
was re-elected in 18GG.* 

SIDNEY T. HOLI\IES was born in Schaghticoke, Rensselaer County, New 
York, in 1815. He received an academical education, and after having spent 
five years in civil engineering, studied law, and entered upon the practice of his 
profession in 1841. In 1851 he was elected Judge and Surrogate for Madison 
County, and held the office imtil 18G4, when he was elected a Representative 
from New York to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth 
Congress is John C. Churchill. 

SAIVIUEL HOOPER was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, February 3, 
1808. Having received a commercial education, he established himself as mer- 
chant in Boston. He has long been a partner in the commercial house of 
William Appleton & Co. In 1851 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives, and in 1857 to the State Senate. In 1801 he was elected a 
Representative from Massachusetts to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, to fill the 
vacancy occasioned by the resignation of William Appleton. He has. been re- 
elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses.— 30. 

GILES W. HOTCHKISS is a member of the bar in Binghamton, New 
York. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty- 
Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864. He was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by William S. Lincoln. — 533, 538. 

JACOB M. HOWARD was born in Shaftsbury, Vennont, July 10, 1805, and 
graduated at Williams College in 1830. Having taught in an academy and 
studied law in Massachusetts, he removed to Michigan in 1833. In 1838 he was 
a member of the State Legislature, and in 1841 was elected a Representative in 
Congress from Michigan. He subsequently served for sis years as Attorney 
General of the State. In 1863 he was elected to a vacancy in the United States 
Senate, and in 1865 he was re-elected for the term ending in 1871.— 36, 196, 398, 
433, 453, 455, 530. 

TIMOTHY O. HOWE was born in Livermore, Maine, February 7, 1816 
Having received an academical education at the Readfield Seminary, he studied 
law, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. He was elected to the Legislature 
of Maine in 1845, and in the same year removed to Green Bay, Wisconsin. 
Five years after he was elected a Circuit Judge, and held the office until his 
resignation in 1855. In 1861 he was elected a Senator in Congress from Wis- 
consin, and was re-elected in 1867. — 431, 459. 

ASAHEL W. HUBBARD was born in Haddam, Connecticut, January 18, 
1819. In 1838 he removed to Indiana, and engaged in school-teaching. He 
entered upon the profession of law in 1841, and was in 1847 elected to the 
Indiana Legislature, in which he served three terms. He removed to Iowa in 
1857, and was soon after elected Judge of the Fourth Judicial District of that 
State. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from Iowa to the Thirty-Eighth 
Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

CHESTER D. HUBBARD was born in Hamden, Connecticut, November 35, 
1814. In the following year he was removed to Pennsylvania, and thence to 



598 THIBTr-J^IJfTn CONGRESS. 

Wheeling, Virginia, in 1819. Having graduated at Wesleyan University, Con- 
necticut, in 1840, lie returned to Wheeling, and engaged actively in business 
pursuits. In 1853 he was elected to the lower House of the Virginia Legislature. 
He was a delegate to the Richmond Convention which passed the ordinance of 
secession, and opposed that movement with so much ardor that he was expelled 
fi'om the Convention. He was a member of the Wheeling Convention which 
organized the restored government of Virginia, and after the formation of the 
new State of West Virginia, was elected to the State Senate. He was elected a 
Representative from West Virginia to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re- 
elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

DEMAS HUBBARD was born In Winfield, New York, January 17, 1808. 
Having received an academic education he gave his attention to fanning and 
the practice of law. He was for many years a member and Chairman of the 
Board of Supervisors of Chenango County, and from 1838 to 1840 was a mem- 
ber of the New York Legislature. In 1804 he was elected a Representative 
fi-om New York to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth 
Congress is William C. Fields. 

JOHN H. HUBBARD was born in Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1805. He was 
brought up a farmer and received a common-school education. He was admitted 
to the bar in 1826. He was five years Prosecuting Attorney for Litchfield 
County, and two terms a member of the State Senate. In the spring of 186? he 
was elected a Representative from Connecticut to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, 
and was re-elected in 1865. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by 
WiUicim H. Barnum. — 148. 

EDWIN N. HUBBELL was born in Coxsackie, New York, August 1-3, 
1813. Having received an academical education, he gave his attention to manu- 
facturing and farming, and held for some time the office of County Supervisor. 
In 1864 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Thomas Cornell. 

JAMES R. HUBBELL was born in Delaware County, Ohio, in 1834. 
Having received a common-school education, he studied and practiced the pro- 
fession of law. He served four terms in the House of Representatives of Ohio, 
of which he was twice the Speaker. In 1850 he was a Presidential Elector. 
In 1804 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Cornelius S. Hamilton, 
deceased. 

CALVIN T. HULBURD was born in Stockholm, New York, June 5, 
1809.' After having graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and studied law 
at Yale College, he engaged in agricultural pvirsuits. In 1843 he was elected to 
the Legislature of New York, and was twice re-elected. In 1863 he was elected 
a Representative from New York to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re- 
elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

JAMES HUMPHREY was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, October 9, 1811, 
and in 1831 graduated at Amherst College, of which his father, Rev. Heman 
Humphrey, was President. After having been principal of an academy in Con- 
necticut, "he studied law, and commenced the practice of his profession in Louis- 
viUe, Kentucky, where he remained only one year. In 1838 he removed to the 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJfDEX. 599 

City of New York for the practice of the law. In 1859 ho was elected a 
member of Congress, and served one term. After remaining in private life a few 
years, lie was elected a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, but died before 
its close, on the IGth Juno, 18GG. — 570. 

JAM:ESM. HUMPIIREYwa.?, born in Erie County, New York, September 
21, 1819. He received a common-school education and studied law. From 1857 
to 1859 he was District Attorney at Bufiiilo. Ho Avas a member of the State 
Senate from 1862 to 18G5, when he was elected a Representative from New York 
to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was re-elected to the Fortieth. 

JOnN W. HUNTER, a banker of Brooklyn, New York, was elected a 
Representative from New York to the Thirty-Ninth Congress to All the vacancy 
occasioned by the deatli of James Humphrey. He took his seat December 4, 
1866. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is William E. Robinson. — 515. 

EBEN C. INGERSOLL was born in Oneida County, New York, December 
12, 1831. He removed \rith his father to Illinois in 1843. Having received an 
academical education at Paducah, Kentucky, ho studied law, and located in 
Peoria, Illinois, for the practice of his profession. In 1856 he was elected to 
the Illinois Legislature. He served as Colonel of Illinois Volunteer's in the 
Civil War. On the deatb of Owen Lovejoy, Marcli 25, 1864, he was elected a 
Representative from Hlinois for the remainder of the Thirty-Eighth Congress, 
and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. — 521. 

THOMAS A. JENCKES was born in ProAddence, Rhode Island, in 1818. 
Having graduated at Brown University in 1838, he entered upon the profession 
of law. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from Rhode Island to the 
Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortietli 
Congresses.— 31, 320, 332, 340, 554. 

PHILIP JOHNSON was bom in Warren County, New Jersey January 
17, 1818, and removed to Pennsylvania in 1839. He was educated at Lafayette 
College, and having studied law, he was admitted to the bar in 1848. He was 
two years ft member of the State Legislature, and was Chairman of the Dem- 
ocratic State Convention in 1857. In 18G0 he was elected a Representative 
from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was subsequently twice 
re-elected. He died before the expiration of the term for which, he was elected 
as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress. — 90, 570. 

REVERDT JOHNSON was bora in Annapolis, Maryland, May 21, 1796. 
He was educated at St. John's College, in his native town, and studied law with 
Ms father. The first office which he held was that of State Attorney. In 1817 
lie removed to Baltimore for the practice of his profession, and was tliree years 
after appointed Chief Commissioner of Insolvent Debtors. In 1821 he was elected 
to the Senate of Maryland, and was re-elected for a second term. In 1845 he 
was elected a Senator in Congress from Maryland, but resigned in 1849 to accept 
the position of Attorney General, to which he had been appointed by President 
Taylor. Subsequently he devoted many years to the uninterrupted practice of 
his profession. He was a delegate to the Peace Congress of 1861, and was in 
in the following year elected a United States Senator from Maryland for the 
term ending in 1869.— 24, 36, 96, 136, 163, 198, 203, 264, 270, 271, 384, 427, 454, 
455, 461, 492,528, 532, 533, 534, 547. 



GOO THIRTY-:N'IjYTH COjYGRESS. 

MORGAN JONES ^aa born in New York City, February 26, 1832, and was 
educated at tlie school of St. James' Church. He adopted the business of a 
plumber, which he conducted in the City of New York. He served as a City 
Councilman for several years, and was subsequently elected a member of the 
Board of Aldermen, of which he was made President. In 1864 he was elected a 
member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was succeeded in the Fortieth Con- 
gress by John Fox. 

GEORGE W. JULIAN was born in Wayne County, Indiana, May 5, 1817. 
After spending three years as school-teacher, he studied law, and commenced the 
practice of the profession in 1840. In 1845 he was a member of the State Leg- 
islature. Having become an earnest advocate of anti-slavery principles, he 
attended the Buffalo Convention of 1848, which nominated Van Buren and 
Adams, and subsequently, as a candidate for Presidential Elector on their ticket 
made a laborious canvass of his district. In 1849 he was Representative iu Con- 
gress from Indiana. In 1852 he was a candidate for Vice-President of the United 
States on the ticket with John P. Hale. In 1860 lie was re-elected Representa- 
tive in Congress, 'and has since been a member of the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty- 
Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses.— 31, 74, 364, 516, 553, 554. 

JOHN A. KASSON was born near Burlington, Vermont, January 11, 1822. 
Having graduated at the University of Vermont, he studied law in Massachu- 
setts, and practiced the profession for a time in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1857 he 
removed to Iowa, and was appointed a Commissioner to report upon the condi- 
tion of the Executive Departments of Iowa. In 1861 he was appointed Assistant 
Postmaster-General, but resigned the position in the following year, when he 
was elected a Representative to Congress from Iowa. He was re-elected in 1864 
to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is Gren- 
viUe M. Dodge.— 72, 863, 525. 

WILLIAJM D. KELLEY was born in Philadelphia in the spring of 1814. 
He was left an orphan when very young, dependent for support and education 
wholly upon his own resources. Having been errand-boy in a book-store, and 
copy-reader in a printing-office, in his fourteenth year he apprenticed himself in a 
jewelry establishment. Having learned his trade, he removed to Boston, where 
he remained four years working at his trade, and giving, meanwhile, considera- 
ble time to reading and study. Returning to Philadelphia, he studied law, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1841. From 1846 for a period of ten years he held 
the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. In 1856, on 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he left the Democratic party, and be- 
came the Republican candidate for Congress, but was defeated. In 1860 he was 
a delegate to the Chicago Republican Convention, and was, in the fall of the 
same year, elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Seventh 
Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth 
Congresses.— 51, 58, 79, 348, 349, 438, 526. 

JOHN R. KELSO was born in Franklin County, Ohio, March 23, 1831. At 
the age of nine years he removed with his parents to North-western Missouri, 
then a wilderness. After surmounting great obstacles he succeeded in obtaining 
an education, and graduated at Pleasant Ridge College in 1858. He soon after 
became principal of an academy at BuflTalo, Missouri. On the breaking out of 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJfDEX. 601 

the rebellion lie was the first in his county to volunteer in defense of the Union, 
and immediately took the field as captain of a company of daring and enterpris- 
ing men. With his company he was detailed to hunt the bushwhackers, who, 
from their hiding-places, were committing the most atrocious outrages upon the 
loyal people. His name became a terror to the rebels and guerillas of the 
Southwest. lie took part in over sixty fierce conflicts, and in personal encoun- 
ter killed twenty-six anued rebels with his own hand. At the close of his ser- 
vice in the war ho was elected a Representative from Missouri to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress. Ho declined re-nomination, and resumed his profession of 
teaching in Springfield, Missouri. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
Joseph J. Gravelly. 

MICHAEL 0. KERR was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, March 15, 1837. 
He was left an orphan at the age of twelve years, and through his own exertions 
obtained an academical education. He taught school for a time, and, in 1851, 
graduated in the Law Department of the University of Louisville, and soon after 
located in New Albany, Indiana. In 1856 he was elected to the Legislature of 
Indiana, and served two terms. In 1863 he was elected reporter of the decisions 
of the Supreme Court, and held the oflSce two years, publishing' five volumes of 
reports. In 18G4 he was elected a Representative from Indiana to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. — 147, 336, 363, 
510. 

JOHN H. KETCHAM was born in Dover, New York, December 31, 1831. 
Having received an academical education, he devoted his attention to agricul- 
tural pursuits. In 1856 and 1857 he was a member of the New York House of 
Representatives, and of the State Senate in 1860 and 1861. He entered the mil- 
itary service in 1863 as Colonel of the One Hundred and Fiftieth New York Reg- 
iment, and became a Brigadier General by brevet. He resigned his position in 
the army in March, 1865, having been elected a Representative from New York 
to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. — 31. 

SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD was born in Hartford County, Maryland, Decem- 
ber 30, 1813, and received an academical education in Washington. Having 
removed to Ohio he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He was 
four years Prosecuting Attorney for Richland County, and was a member of the 
Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850. Having removed to Iowa, he was 
elected to the State Sentte in 1856. He was Governor of Iowa from 1860 to 
1864, and, in January, 1866, he was elected a United States Senator from Iowa 
for the unexpired term of James Harlan, ending in 1867, at which date he was 
succeeded by his predecessor, who was re-elected. — 487. 

WILLIAJI H. KOONTZ, a lawyer by profession, was elected a Representa- 
tive from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He successfully contested 
the seat taken by Alexander II. Coflfroth, and was admitted near the close of the 
first session. He was, in 1866, re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.— 508. 

ANDREW J. KUYKENDALL was born in Gallatin County, Illinois, March 
3, 1815, and became a lawyer. From 1843 to 1846 he was a member of the Illi- 
nois House of Representatives, and was, from 1850 to 1853, a member of the 
State Senate. He was Major of the Thirty-First Illinois Infantry, but resigned 



G02 TRIRTY-KIJ\'TH COJTGRESS. 

on account of ill health in the early part of the war. In 1864 he was elected a 
Representative to Congress from Illinois, and was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by Green B. Kaum. 

ADDISON H. LAFLIN was born in Lee, Massachusetts, October 24, 1823. 
He o-raduated at Williams College in 1843. He afterward settled in Herkimer 
County, New York, and became engaged extensively in the manufacture of 
paper. In 1857 he was elected State Senator. In 1864 he was elected a Repre- 
sentative to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. 

HENRY S. LANE was born in Montgomery County, Kentucky, February 
24, 1811. After having obtained an academical education, he studied law, and 
removed to Indiana, where he engaged in the practice of his profession. In 
1837 he was elected to the Indiana Legislature. In 1840 he was elected a 
Representative in Congress from Indiana. He served under General Taylor in 
the Mexican War as Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers. He was President of 
the first Republican National Convention which met in Philadelphia, July 4, 
18o6. In 1861 he was elected Governor of Indiana, but resigned the office two 
days after his inauguration to accept the position of Senator in Congress, to 
which he was elected for the term ending in 1867. He was succeeded by Oliver 
P. Morton.— 213, 381, 383, 499, 532. 

JAMES H. LANE was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, June 22, 1814. He 
served as a soldier thi-ough the Mexican War, and soon after his return in 1849 
was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana. He was an active Democratic 
politician, and as such was elected a Representative in Congress from Indiana in 
1853. Soon after the close of his Congressional term, he went to Kansas, where 
he actively aided in the work of erecting a Free-State Government. He was 
President of the Topeka and the Leavenworth Constitutional Conventions, and 
was elected by the people Major General of the Free-State Troops. On the 
admission of Kansas into the Union, he was elected a Senator in Congress from 
that State. Soon after the breaking out of the Rebellion, he was appointed by 
President Lincoln a Brigadier General of Volunteers. He was a member of the 
Baltimore Convention of 1864. In 1865 he was re-elected by the Legislature of 
Kansas a Senator in Congress. On the 1st of July, 1866, while at Fort Leaven- 
worth on leave of absence from the Senate on account of ill-health, he committed 
suicide.— 171, 201, 279, 284, 285, 457, 569. 

GEORGE R. LATHAJVI was born in Prince William County, Virginia, 
March 9, 1832. He engaged in teaching school, and while in that emplo\Tnent 
studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1859. During the Presidential 
Campaign of 1860, he edited a paper in Grafton, Virginia. At the breaking out 
of the Rebellion, he entered the army as Captain, and became Colonel of the 
Second Virginia Volunteers. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from 
West Virginia to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by Bethuel 51. Kitchen. 

GEORGE V. LAWRENCE, whose father, Joseph Lawrence, was a member 
of Congress, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1818. He re- 
ceived a liberal education at Washington College, and enga'ged in agricultural 
Dursuits. He was in 1844 elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Rep- 
resentatives, and was three times re-elected. He served five terms in the State 
Senate, of which, during his last term of service, he was the Presiding Officer, 



BIOGRAPHICAL IMDEX. G03 

In 1864 lie was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress, and was re-elected in 18GG. 

WILLIAM LAWRENCE was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, June 20, 1819. 
He graduated at Franklin College, Ohio, in 18138, and subsequently taught school 
in McConnellsville. In 1840 ho graduated in the Law Department of Cincinnati 
College. In 1841 ho located in Bellefoutaino, Ohio, for the practice of law. In 
1842 he was appointed Commissioner of Bankrupts for Logan County. In 1845 
he was elected Prosecuting Attorney, and in the same year became proprietor of 
the " Logan Gazette," of which ho was two years the editor. In 184G he was 
elected a Representative in the Legislature, and was re-elected in the following 
year. In 1849 and 1850 he was a member of the Ohio Senate, and again in 
1854, having in the interval held the office of Reporter for the Supreme Court. 
He was the originator of many legislative acts of great importance to the State, 
among the rest one relating to land titles, known as " Lawrence's Law," and 
the OJdo Free Banking Laic, similar in some respects to the existing National 
Banking Law. In 1854 ho was one of the signers to a call for a State Conven- 
tion in opposition to the " Kansas-Nebraska Bill." In 1856 he was elected a 
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and in 1861 was re-elected for a term of 
five years. In 1862 he had command as Colonel of the Eighty-Fourth Regiment 
of Ohio Volunteers for three months. In September, 1863, President Lincoln 
gave him the commission of Judge of the U. S. District Court of Florida, which 
he declined. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, and in 1866 he was re-elected. — 343, 345, 520. 

FRANCIS C. LeBLOND was bom in Ohio, and became a lawyer. In 
1851 and in 1853 he was elected to the State Legislature and served as Speaker. 
In 1862 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Eighth Con- 
gress, and was re-elected in 1864. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
William Mungen.—2iZ, 306, 519, 538, 547. 

JOHN W. LEFTWICH was born in Bedford County, Virginia, September 7, 
1826. He removed ^\ith his parents to Tennessee in 1834, and was occupied in 
farm work in summer, and attending school in winter, until twenty years of 
age. He served as a private in the Mexican War, and on his retui-n attended 
the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1850. He 
practiced medicine in iliddle Tennessee two years, and then removed to Mem- 
phis, where he was occupied with mercantile pursuits until the breaking out of 
the war. Being loyal to the Union, he found it necessary after the battle of 
Fort Donaldson to cross the Federal lines. After the occupation of Memphis 
by the Federal forces in June, 1862, he returned to find that his personal prop- 
erty had been confiscated by the rebels. He resumed business, however, and 
was elected President of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce on its reorganiza- 
tion. He was elected a Representative from Tennessee to the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress, to which, with his colleagues, he was admitted in July, 1866. He 
was nominated for re-election by the " Conservative Party," and was defeated 
by David A. Nunn. 

BENJAMIN F. LOAN was born in Hardinsburg, Kentucky, in 1819. In 
1838 he removed to Missouri and engaged in the practice of law. At the break- 
ing out of the rebellion he entered the army, and was appointed Brigadier Gen- 
eral. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from Missouri to the Thirty-Eighth 
Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 



604 THIRTY-JflJfTH COJiGRESS. 

JOHN W. LONGTEAR was born in Shandaken, Ulster County, New York, 
October 22, 1820. Having acquired an academical education, be removed to 
Michigan in 1844. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 184G. In 
18G2 be was elected a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-Eighth Con- 
gress, and was re-elected in 1864. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
Austin Blair. — 447. ^ 

JOHN LYNCH was born in Portland, Maine, February 15, 1825. After 
receiving an academical education he entered upon mercantile pursuits in his 
native city. After serving two years in the State Legislature he was, in 18G4, 
elected a Representative from Maine to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re- 
elected in 1866. 

SAMUEL 8. MARSHALL was born in Illinois, and was educated at Cum- 
berland College, Kentucky. He devoted himself to the practice of law in Illi- 
nois, and was elected to the State Legislature in 1846. He served two years as 
State Attorney, and, in 1851, was elected a Judge of the Circuit Court, and held 
the office until 1854, when he was elected a Representative from Illinois to the 
Thirty-Fourth Congress and was re-elected in 1856. He was a delegate to the 
Chicago Democratic Convention of 1864, and was the same year elected a Rep- 
resentative to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was re-elected in 1866. — 148, 353. 

OILMAN MARSTON was born in Orford, New Hampshire. In 1837 he 
graduated at Dartmouth College, and in 1840 at the Dane Law School. He 
commenced the practice of law in the following year. In 1845 he was elected to 
the New Hampshire Legislature, and served four years. In 1859 he was elected 
a Representative from New Hampshire to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and was 
re-elected in 1861. In June, 1861, he was appointed Colonel of the Second Reg- 
iment of New Hampshire Volunteers, and in 1863 was promoted to the rank of 
Brigadier General. He participated in many battles, and on the fall of Rich- 
mond retired from the army. Early in 1865 he was re-elected a Representative 
in Congress from New Hampshire. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
Jacob H. Ela.— 31. 

JAMES M. MARVIN was born in Ballston, New York, February 27, 1809. 
He spent his boyhood on a farm, and received on academical education. When 
not in public lifehe has been occupied in managing a large estate. In 1846 he 
was elected to the Legislature of New York, and subsequently held, for three 
terms, the office of County Supervisor. In 1862 he was elected a Representative 
from New York to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty- 
Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

HORACE MAYNARD was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, August 30, 
1814. He graduated at Amherst College in 1838. Soon after, he removed to 
Tennessee, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of 
East Tennessee. While holding this position he studied law, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1844. He was a Presidential Elector in 1852, and in 1856 was . 
elected a Representative from Tennessee to the Thirty-Fifth Congress, and was 
twice re-elected. He was in Washington as a member of tho Thirty-Seventh 
Congress when the rebels took possession of Tennessee. His property was con- 
fiscated, and his family was driven from their home in East Tennessee. Ho was 
a delegate to the Baltimore Republican Convention of 1864, and was the same 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. 605 

year re-elected a Representative from Tennessee to the Tliirty-Nintli Congress, 
and was admitted to his scat in July, 18G6. Ho was re-elected to the Fortieth 
Congress.— 17, 4'34, 478, 480, 506, 527. 

JOSEPH W. McCLURG was born in St. Louis County, Missouri, February 
23, 1818, and was educated at Miami University, Ohio. He subsequently spent 
two years as a teacher in Louisiana and Mississippi. In 1841 ho went to Texas, 
where ho was admitted to the bar, and became Clerk of a Circuit Court. In 
1844 he settled in Missouri as a merchant. At the outbreak of the civil war he 
suffered severe losses at the hands of rebels, and abandoning his business he 
served for a time as Colonel of Cavalry. He was a member of the INIissouri State 
Convention of 1863, and was in that year elected a Representative from Missouri 
to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864 and 1866. 

ULRAM McCULLOUOE was born in Cecil County, Maryland, September 
20, 1813. He was educated at the Elkton Academy, studied law, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1838. From 1845 to 1851 he was a member of the Maryland Sen- 
ate. In 1853 he was appointed by the Legislature one of the codifiers of the 
laws of Maryland, and aided in making the present code of that State. In 1864 
he was elected a Representative from Maryland to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 
and was re-elected in 1866. 

JAMES A. McDOUGALL was born at Bethlehem, New York, November 19, 
1817, and was educated at the Albany Grammar School. He assisted in the sur- 
vey of the first railroad ever built in this coimtry. In 1837 he removed to Illinois 
and engaged in the practice of law. In 1843 he was chosen Attorney General 
of Illinois, and two years after was re-elected. In 1849 he originated and accom- 
panied an exploring expedition to the far West. He soon after emigrated to 
California, and in 1850 was elected Attorney General of that State. From 1853 
to 1855 he served as a Representative in Congress from California. In 1801 he 
was elected United States Senator for California for the term ending with the 
expiration of the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He died in Albany, New York, in the 
summer of 1867.— 136, 137, 163, 377, 387, 433, 461, 533, 535. 

WALTER D. McINDOE was born in Scotland, March 30, 1819. He 
emigrated to New York City in his fifteenth year, and was a clerk in that city, 
and afterwards in Charleston and St. Louis. He subsequently settled in Wis- 
consin, and engaged in the lumber trade. In 1850 he was a member of the 
Wisconsin Legislature, and was twice re-elected. In 1856, and in 1860, he was 
a Presidential Elector. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from Wiscon- 
sin to fill a vacancy in the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the 
Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. His successor in the Fortieth 
Congress is Cadwalader C. Washburn. 

SAMUEL McKEE was born in Montgomery County, Kentucky, November 
4, 1833. In 1858 he graduated at the Miami University, Ohio, and afterwards at 
the Cincinnati Law School m 1858. He subsequently practiced law until 1863, 
when he entered the Union army as Captain of the Fourteenth Kentucky Cav- 
alry. He was thirteen months a prisoner in Libby Prison. In 1865 he was 
elected a Representative from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress.— 153, 
861, 441. 



GOG THIBTY-J{INTR COKGRESS. 

DONALD McRUER was born in Maine in 1836. He received an academical 
education, and engaged in mercantile pursuits. Removing to California, he 
settled in San Francisco. He lield for some time the office of Harbor Commis- 
sioner for that State. In 1864 he was elected a Representative' from California 
to the Thirty -Ninth Congress. He was succeeded by Samuel B. Axtell in the 
Fortieth Congress. 

ULYSSES MERCUR was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, August 12, 1818. 
lie graduated at Jefferson College, in 1842, and was admitted to the bar in the 
following year. In 1861 he was elected President Judge of the Thirteenth 
Judicial District of Pennsylvania, for a term of ten years, but resigned in 1864 
when he was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress. In 1866 he was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

GEORGE F. MILLER was born in Chilisquaque, Northumberland County, 
Pennsylvania, September 5, 1809. Having obtained an academical education, he 
studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He was for several years 
Secretary of the Lewisbarg University. He took an active interest in local 
politics, but frequently declined nominations for County and State offices. In 
1864 he was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty -Ninth 
Congress, and was re-elected in 1886. — 443, 510. 

JAMES K. MOORHEAD was born in Pennsylvania, in 1806. He spent his 
youth on a farm and as an apprentice to a tanner. He was a contractor for 
building the Susquehanna branch of the Pennsylvania Canal, on which he orig- 
inated a passenger packet line. In 1886 he removed to Pittsburg, where he 
became President of a company for the improvement of the navigation of the 
Monongahela, and subsequently was President of several telegraph companies. 
In 1859 he was re-elected a Representative to the Thirty-Sixth Congress from 
Pennsylvania, and has been re-elected to every succeeding Congress, including 
the Fortieth.— 31. 

EDWIN D. MORGAN was born in Washington, Massachusetts, February 8, 
1811. At the age of seventeen he became a clerk, and three years later a part- 
ner in a wholesale grocery house in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1886 he settled 
in New York City, and embarked extensively in mercantile pitrsuits. In 1849 
he was chosen an Alderman of the city, and soon after was elected a member 
of the State Senate, in Avhich he served two terms. Since 1856 he has been 
Chairman of the National Republican Committee. In 1858 he was elected 
Governor of New York, and re-elected in 1860. During his administration, 
223,000 troops were sent into the field from New York. Governor Blorgan was 
appointed by President Lincoln a Major General of Volunteers. In 1863 he was 
elected United States Senator from New York for the term ending in 1869. 

JUSTIN S MORRILL was born in Strafford, Vermont, April 14, 1810. He 
received an academical education, and subsequently gave his attention to mercan- 
tile and agricultural pursuits. In 1854 he was elected a Representative from 
Vermont to the Thirty-Fourth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thiry-Fifth, 
Thirty-Sixth, Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. In 
1867 he became a United States Senator from Vermont for the term ending in 
1873, succeeding Luke P. Poland, who became the successor of Mr. Morrill as a 
Representative in the Fortieth Congress. — 17, 19, 29,.555. 



BIOGRAPHICAL liN'DEX. 607 

LOT M. MORRILL was born at Belgrade, Maine, in 1815. He studied at 
Waterville College, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. In 1854 lie was a 
member of the Maine Legislature, and ia 185G ho was President of the 
State Senate; In 1858 ho was elected Governor of Maine, and was twice 
re-elected. In 18G1 he was elected United States Senator from Maine for the 
unexpired term of Vice-President Hamlin. In 1863 ho was re-elected to the 
Senate for the term ending in 1869.— 38, 304, 30o, 307, 408, 484,485, 489, 530. 

DANIEL MORRIS was born in Seneca County, New York, January 4, 1813. 
He was bred a farmer, taught school for a time, and finally became a lawyer. 
Having been District Attorney for Yates County, and member of the State Leg- 
islature, he was in 1803 elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty- 
Eighth Congress, and in 1864 was re-elected. His successor in the Fortieth Con- 
gress is William H. Kelsey. 

SAMUEL W. MOULTON was born in Wareham, Massachusetts, January 
20, 1833. Having acquired a common-school education, at the age of twenty 
he emigrated to the West, and spent d year at Covington, Kentucky, where 
he commenced the study of law. He subsequently went to Mississippi, where 
he taught school, and continued the study of law. In 1845 he settled in Illinois, 
and soon after commenced the practice of law. In 1853 he was elected to the 
Legislature of Illinois, and was continuously re-elected until 1859. He was 
the author of the Free-School System of Illinois. He held the position of 
Chairman of the Board of Education for a number of years. He was a can- 
didate for Presidential Elector on the Democratic ticket in 1856. On the 
breaking out of the Rebellion he joined the Republican party, and was in 1863 
elected President of the Union League of Illinois. In 1864 he was elected 
Representative from the State at large to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was 
succeeded by John A. Logan in the Fortieth Congress. — 149. 

LEONARD MYERS was bom in Attleborough, Pennsylvania, November 
13, 1837. Having entered the profession of law, and settled in Philadelphia, 
he became Solicitor for two municipal districts in that city. He digested the 
ordinances for the consolidation of the city, and has translated several works 
from the French. In 1803 he was elected a member of the Thirty-Eighth Con- 
gress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

JAMES W. If ESMITH was born in Washington County, Maine, July 23, 
1830. When quite young, he removed to New Hampshire, emigrated to Ohio 
in 1838, subsequently spent some time in Missouri, and finally settled in Oregon 
in 1843. In 1853 he was appointed United States Marshal for Oregon. In 1857 
he was appointed Superintendent of Indian Aflairs for Oregon and Washington 
Territories. In 1861 he became United States Senator from Oregon for the term 
ending in 1867, when he was succeeded by Henry W. Corbett. 

WILLIAJM A. NEWELL is a native of Ohio, and a graduate of Rutger's 
College. He studied medicine, and took up his residence in Allentown, New 
Jersey. He was a member of Congress from that State from 1847 to 1851. In 
1856 he was elected Governor of New Jersey, and held the office till 1860. He 
was again elected a Representative to Congress in 1864, and was succeeded in 
the Fortieth Congress by Cha/rles Haight. 

WILLIAM E. NIBLACK was born in Dubois County, Indiana, May 19, 



608 . THIRTY-JriJfTH COJ^GRESS. 

1822, and ajwiit liis early life on a farm. He attended the Indiana University 
at intervals during three years, and afterwards devoted some time to surveying 
and civil engineering. In 1845 he commenced the practice of law, and in 1849 
he was elected a Representative in the State Legislature. In the following year 
he was elected to the State Senate. In January, 1854, he was appointed Judge 
of the Third Judicial Circuit, to fill a vacancy, and was, in the following fall, 
elected to the office for the term of sis years. In 1857 he was elected a Repre. 
sentative from Indiana to the Thirty-Fifth Congress, and was re-elected in 1859- 
After the close of the Thirty-Sixth Congress he served one term in the State 
Legislature. In 1864 he was again elected a Representative in Congress from 
Indiana, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. — 526. 

JOHF A. NICHOLSON vr&s bom in Laurel, Delaware, November 17, 1825'. 
Having graduated at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, he studied law, and set- 
tled in Dover, Delaware, where he was admitted to the bar in 1850. In 1865 he 
entered Congress as a Representative from Delav/are, and was re-elected to the 
Fortieth Congress. — 361. • 

THOMAS E. NOELL was born in PerryviUe, Missouri, April 3, 1839. He 
was admitted to the bar at nineteen years of age, and practiced until 1861, when 
he was appointed a Military Commissioner for the arrest of disloyal persons. 
He subsequently went into the ranks of the State militia, and reached the rank 
of Major. In 1862 he was appointed a Captain in the Nineteenth Regiment of 
Regular United States Infantry. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from 
Missouri to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. , 

DANIEL S. NORTON was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, April 12, 1829. 
After being educated at Kenyon College, he served in the Mexican War. He 
subsequently went to California, and thence to Nicaragua, where he spent a 
year. Returning to Ohio, he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. 
He emigrated to Minnesota in 1855, and was, two years after, elected to the 
State Senate, to which he was three times re-elected. In 1865 he was elected a 
Senator in Congress from Minnesota for the term ending in 1871. 

JAMES W. NYE was born in Madison Coimty, New York, June 10, 1815, 
and entered the profession of law. In 1861 he was appointed by President Lin- 
coln Governor of Nevada Territory. He held this office until the admission of 
Nevada into the Union, when he was elected a Senator from the new State for 
the term ending in 1871. — 425, 457. 

CHARLES O'NEILL was born in Philadelphia, March 21, 1821. Having 
graduated at Dickinson College, and studied law, he was admitted to the bar 
in 1843. He served five years in the House of Representatives and Senate of 
Pennsylvania. In 1862 he was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Eighth 
Congress. In 1865 he entered upon his second term in Congress, and was re- 
elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

OODLOVE S. ORTH was*born near Lebanon, Pennsylvania, April 22, 1817. 
He was educated at the Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg. In 1839 he was ad- 
mitted to the bar, and removed to Indiana, locating in Lafayette. In 1843 ho 
was elected to the Indiana Senate, and served six years. A part of the time he 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. GOO 

•was President of that body. In 1848 lie was a Whig candidate for Presidential 
Elector. In 18G1 he Avas a member of the " Peace Congress." In 18G2, Indiana 
being threatened with a sudden invasion, the Governor made a call for volun- 
teers to meet the emergency. Mr. Orth immediately responded mth two hun- 
dred men, who elected him their Captain. He was placed in command of the 
U. S. Kam " Horner," which cruised the Ohio river, and did much to restore and 
maintain quiet along its shores. In 18G2 he was elected a Representative from 
Indiana to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth 
and Fortieth Congresses. — 336. 

HALBERT E. PAINE was bom at Chardon, Ohio, February 4, 1820. Hav- 
ing graduated at the Western Reserve College in 1845, he studied law, and 
located in Cleveland. In 1857 he removed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He en- 
tered the army in 1861 as Colonel of the Fourth Wisconsin Regiment, and soon 
rose to the rank of Brigadier General. He lost a leg in June, 1868, at the last 
assault on Port Hudson. Resigning his commission in 1865, he was elected a 
Representative to the Thirty-Ninth Congress from Wisconsin, and was re-elected 
to the Fortieth Congress. — 504, 506. 

DA VIB T. PATTERSON was bom at Cedar Creek, Green County, Ten- 
nessee, February 28, 1819. He was educated at Meadow Creek Academy and 
Green-i^lle College. He followed for some time the business of a paper-maker, 
but gave attention to the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1841, 
and practiced in Greenville. Here he married a daughter of Andrew Johnson. 
In 1854 he was elected Judge of the First Judicial Circuit of Tennessee. In May, 
1865, he was elected a United States Senator from Tennessee for the term end- 
ing in 1869. After a protracted consideration and discussion of his case, he was 
sworn in near the close of the first session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress. — 478, 
482. 

JAMES W. PATTERSON was born in Hanniker, New Hampshire, July 2, 
1823. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1848. He was Professor of Math- 
ematics in Dartmouth College from 1854 to 1859, and was then transferred to 
the chair of Astronomy and Meteorology. He was four years Secretary of the 
Board of Education of New Hampshire, and in 1862 he was a member of the 
State Legislature. He was elected a Representative from New Hampshire to the 
Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. At the expiration of the latter 
Congress he became United States Senator from Vermont for the term ending 
in 1873. 

SIDNEY PERHAM was born in Woodstock, Maine, March 27, 1819. Until 
his thirty-fourth year he was a farmer and a teacher. In 1852 he was elected a 
member of the State Board of Agriculture, and served two years. In 1855 he 
was a member of the Maine Legislature, and officiated as Speaker. In 1856 he 
was a Presidential Elector. In 1858 he was elected Clerk of a Coimty Court, 
which position he held until 1862, when he was elected a Representative from 
Maine to the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth 
and Fortieth Congresses. 

CHARLES E. PHELPS was bora in Guilford, Vermont, May 1, 183% Hav- 
ing graduated at Princeton College in 1853, he came to the Maryland bar in 
1855. In 1862 he was made Lieutenant-Colonel of the Seventh Maryland Vol- 
39 



GIO TRIRTY-KmTR COJ^GBESS. 

mitecrs, and was discharged, on account of wounds, in 1864. He was elected a 
Representative from Maryland to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected 
in 1866.— 156. 

FREDERICK A. PIKE was bom' in Calais, Maine, where he now resides. 
He adopted the profession of law, and served some time as Attorney for the 
County. He was several years a member, and during one term Speaker, of the 
Maine House of Representatives. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from 
Maine to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, 
Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses.— 348, 503, 504, 519, 553. 

TOBIAS A. PLANTS was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, March 17, 
1811. After teaching school for several years, he studied law, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1841. Having settled in Ohio, he served in the State Legislature 
from 1858 to 1861. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. — 509. 

LUKE P. POLAND was born in Westford, Vermont, November 1, 1815. 
Having received an academical education, he studied law, and was admitted to 
the bar in 1836. In 1839 and 1840 he was Register of Probate for Lamoille 
County. In 1843 he was a member of the State Constitutional Convention, and 
in the following year was elected Prosecuting Attorney for his County. In 
1848 he was elected by the Legislature one of the Judges of the Supreme Court 
of Vermont. This position he continued to hold by annual elections until No- 
vember, 1865, when he was appointed to fill the vacancy in the United States 
Senate occasioned by the death of Judge Collamer. His term of service in the 
Senate closing March 4, 1867, he took his seat as a Representative from Vermont 
in the Fortieth Congress. — 28, 459. 

SAMUEL C. POMEROT was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, January 
3, 1816. He entered Amherst College in 1836, and in 1838 went to Monroe 
County, New York, where he resided four years. He returned to his native 
town in 1842, and having espoused the Anti-Slavery cause, he labored zealously 
to advance its principles. Annually for eight years he ran on the Anti-Slavery 
ticket for the Massachusetts Legislature, without success, until 1852, when he 
was elected over both Whigs and Democrats. In 1854 he aided in organizing 
the New England Emigrant Aid Society, and was its financial agent, and the 
same year he conducted a colony to Kansas. He was a member of the Territo- 
rial Defense Committee, and was active in his efforts to protect the settlers from 
the border ruffians. During the famine in Kansas, he was Chairman of the 
Relief Committee. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions 
of 1856 and 1860. In 1861 he was elected a Senator in Congress from Kansas, 
and was re-elected in 1867 for the term ending in 1873. — 404, 487, 495. 

THEODORE M. POMEROY was bom in Cayuga, New York, December 31, 
1824 He graduated at Hamilton College, and adopted the profession of law. 
From 1850 to 1856 he was District Attorney for his native county, and in 1857 
was a member of the New York Legislature. In 1860 he was elected a Repre- 
sentative from New York to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and has been re-electd 
to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. — 30. 

M 

HIRAM PRICE was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, January 10, 
1814. Removing to Iowa, he settled in the City of Davenport, and was made 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. 611 

President of tlie State Bank of Iowa. In 1863 lie was elected a Bepresentative 
from Iowa to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was ro-clectcd to the Thirty- 
Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 30. 

WILLIAM BADFORB was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, June 24, 
1814. He settled in New York City in 1839, and engaged in mercantile pur- 
suits. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty- 
Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864. He was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by William H. Robertson. 

ALEXANDER RAMSAY was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Septem- 
ber 8, 1815. In 1841 he was elected CTerk of the Pennsylvania House of Repre- 
sentatives. From 1843 to 1847 he was a Representative in Congress from Penn- 
sylvania. In 1849 he was appointed, by President Taylor, the first Territorial 
Governor of Minnesota, and held the office until 1853. During his term of office, 
he negotiated some important Indian treaties. From 1858 to 1863 he held the 
office of Governor of the State of Minnesota. In 1863 he was elected a United 
States Senator from Jlinnesota for the term ending in 1869. 

SAMUEL J. RANDALL was born in Philadelphia, in 1838. He was for 
many years engaged in mercantile pursuits. He served four years in the Phila- 
delphia City Council and one term in the State Senate. In 1863 he was elected 
a Representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the 
Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. — 79, 444. 

WILLIAM H. RANDALL was born in Kentucky. He studied law, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1835. Having held the office of Clerk of the Circuit 
Court for a number of years, he was, in 1863, elected a Representative to Con- 
gress from Kentucky, and was re-elected in 1864. His successor in the Fortieth 
Congress is Oeoi'ge M. Adams. 

HENRY J. RAYMOND was bom in Lima, New York, January 24, 1820. 
He was brought up on a farm, and became teacher in a district school when 
sixteen years of age. In 1840 he graduated at the University of Vermont, and 
soon after went to New York City, where, in 1841, he became managing editor 
of the " New York Tribune." He subsequently became the leading editor of 
the " New York Courier and Enquirer." In 1849 he was elected to the New 
York Legislature, and having been re-elected, was made Speaker of the House. 
In 1851 he established the " New York Times." He was subsequently elected 
Lieutenant-Governor of New York, and was again a member of the General 
Assembly. In 1864 he was -elected a Representative from New York to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Thomas 
E. Stewart.— 31, 155, 234, 314, 317, 338, 364, 370, 373, 439, 440, 513, 524, 535, 
564. 

ALEXANDER H. RICE was bom in Newton, Massachusetts, in August, 
1818. He graduated at Union College in 1844, and subsequently engaged in the 
manufacture of paper. In 1853 he was elected a member and President of the 
City Council of Boston. In 1856 and 1857 he was Mayor of Boston. In 1858 he 
was elected a Representative from Massachusetts to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, 
and was re-elected to the Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth, and Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gresses. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Ginery TwitcheU. 



612 THIRTY-KIJ^TR COJfGRESS. 

JOHN H. KICE was born in Mount Vernon, Maine, February 5, 1816. Hav- 
ing been successively slieriiF, lumberman, and lawyer, be was, in 1852, elected 
State Attorney of Maine. He held this oflBce until 1860, wben be was elected a 
Representative from Maine to the Tbirty-Seventb Congress. He was re-elected 
to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. He was succeeded in the 
Fortieth Congress by John A. Peters. 

GEORGE REED RIDDLE was bom in New Castle, Delaware, in 1817. 
He was educated at Delaware College. Devoting himself to civil engineering, 
he was occupied for some years in locating and constructing canals and railroads. 
He afterwards studied law, and was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1848. In 
1850 he was chosen a Representative in Congress from Delaware, and was re- 
elected in 1852. In 1864 he was elected a United States Senator for the term 
ending in 1869, and died in Washington, March, 1867. 

BUR WELL C. RITTER was born in Kentucky, January 10, 1810. He 
has devoted his life to agricultural pursuits. In 1843, and again in 1850, he was 
a member of the State Legislature. In 1865 he was elected a Representative 
from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. John Young Broim was elected 
as his successor in the Fortieth Congress. — 149. 

ANDREW J. ROGERS was born in Hamburg, New Jersey, July 1, 1828. 
He spent his youth as an assistant in a hotel and in a country store. He studied 
law while engaged in school-teaching, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. In 
1862 he was elected a Representative from New Jersey to the Thirty-Eighth 
Congress, and in 1864 was re-elected. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Con- 
gress by John Hill.— 59, 222, 306, 325, 447, 462, 520, 553. 

EDWARD H. ROLLINS was born in RoUingford, New Hampshire, October 
3, 1824. Having received an academical education, he taught school for some 
time, and subsequently engaged in mercantile pursuits. From 1855 to 1857 he 
was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature, and during two years was 
Speaker of the House. In 1856 he was Chairman of the State Republican Com- 
mittee. In 1860 he was elected a Representative from New Hampshire to the 
Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty- 
Ninth Congresses. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is Aaron F. Stevens. 

EDMUND G. ROSS was bom in Wisconsin. He learned the art of print- 
ing, and became an editor. In 1856 he removed to Kansas, and took an active 
part in the affairs of the territory. He was a member of' the Kansas Constitu- 
tional Convention of 1858. From that time until 1861 he was a member of the 
State Legislature. He served in a Kansas regiment during the rebellion, and 
reached the rank of Major. He subsequently became editor of the " Lawrence 
Tribune." In July, 1866, he was appomted a Senator in Congress from Kansas 
for the unexpired term of James H. Lane, deceased. 

LEWIS W. ROSS was born in Seneca County, New York, December 8, 
1812. He was removed in boyhood to Illinois. He was educated at Dlinois 
College, and adopted the profession of law. He was elected to the State Legis- 
lature in 1840 and 1844. He was a Democratic Presidential Elector in 1848, and 
a delegate to the Charleston and Baltimore Conventions of 1860. In 1861 he 
was a member of the State Constitutional Convention, and m the following year 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJiDEX. G13 

was elected a Representative from Illinois to the Tliirty-Eighth Congress. He 
was re-elected to tlie Tliirty-Niutli and Fortieth Congresses. — 513. 

LO YELL n. RO U8SEA U was born in Stanford, Kentucky, August 4, 
1818. He studied law, and removed to Indiana in 1841. He was three years a 
member of the Indiana House of Representatives, and three years a member of 
the State Senate. He served as a Captain in the Mexican War, and on his return 
settled in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1860 he was elected to the Senate of Ken- 
tucky, and after serving through the stormy session of 18C1 ho resigned, to raise 
a regiment for the war. In June, 1861, he was commissioneo" a Colonel, and in 
October of the same year was made a Brigadier General. In October of the 
following year he was promoted to the rank of Major General for his gallantry 
in the battles of Shiloh and Stone River. In 1865 he was elected a Representa- 
tive from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. At the close of his Congres- 
sional term he was commmissioned a Brigadier General in the Regular Army, 
and assigned to the command of the newly acquired possessions of the United 
States in the North-west.— 31, 151, 573, 573, 574. 

WILLARD SA JJL8B UR Y was born in Kent County, Delaware, June 2, 
1820. He was educated at Delaware College and Dickinson College. Having 
studied law, he was admitted to the bar in 1845. In 1850 he was appointed 
Attorney General of Delaware, and held the office five years. In 1859 he was 
elected a United States Senator from Delaware, and was re-elected in 1865 for 
the term ending in 1871.— 24, 44, 124, 137, 186, 192, 219, 387, 306, 405, 456, 458, 
496, 531, 534, 548. 

PHILETUS SAWYER was bom in Whiting, Addison County, Vermont. 
After receiving a common-school and business education, he removed to Wiscon- 
sin and engaged in the lumber trade. In 1857 and 1861 he was elected to the 
Wisconsin Legislature. He served as Mayor of Oshkosh in 1863 and 1864. In 
the latter year he was elected a Representative from Wisconsin to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. 

ROBERT C. SCHENCK was born in Franklin, Ohio, October 4, 1809. He 
graduated at Miami University in 1827. He studied law under Thomas Corwin, 
and was admitted to the bar in 1831. He was elected to the Ohio Legislature 
in 1841, and served two terms. In 1843 he was elected a Representative from 
Ohio to the Twenty-Eighth Congress, and served four successive terms. At the 
close of Thirty-First Congress, in 1851, he was appointed by President Fillmore 
Minister to Brazil, and negotiated several important treaties with South Amer- 
ican Governments. After his return in 1853, he became largely interested in 
railroad enterprises, and was President of a line from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to 
the Mississippi. At the breaking out of the rebellion he ofiered his services to 
the Government, and was commissioned a Brigadier General, May 17, 1861. He 
was in numerous engagements, including both the Bull Rim battles, where he 
displayed much skill and bravery. He was promoted to the rank of Major Gen- 
eral in August, 1863, and was assigned to the command of the Middle Depart- 
ment, including Baltimore, Maryland, in which he rendered eflacient service to 
the country. Having been re-elected to Congi-ess, he resigned his commission 
in December, 1863, and took his seat in the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He was 
re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. — 31, 353, 353, 354, 366, 
439, 537, 553. 



614 THIBTY-JflJ^TE COJVGEESS. 

GLENNI W. SCOFIELD was born in Cliautauque County, Marcli 11,1817. 
He graduated at Hamilton College in 1840, and removed to Warren, Pennsyl- 
vania, where lie was admitted to the bar in 1843. In 1850 and 1851 he was a 
Representative in the Pennsylvania Legislature, and from 1857 to 1859 was a 
State Senator. In 1861 he was appointed President Judge of the Eighteenth 
Judicial District of the State. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from 
Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty- 
Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. — ^56, 508. 

GEOROE S.' SHANELIN was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky. He 
engaged in the practice of law, and in agricultural affairs. He was several 
years a member of the Kentucky Legislature, and was Commonwealth's 
Attorney of a Judicial District. He was a member of the Philadelphia Conven- 
tion of 1856 which nominated Fillmore. In 1865 he was elected a Representa- 
tive from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded in the 
Fortieth Congress by James B. Beck. — 151, 440, 552. 

SAMUEL SHELLABARGER was born in Clark County, Ohio, December 
10, 1817. He graduated at the Miami University in 1841. He studied law, and 
having been admitted to the bar practiced in the city of Springfield, Ohio. In 
1853 and 1853 he was a member of the Ohio Legislature. In 1860 he was 
elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Seventh Congress. He was 
re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 156, 231, 238, 345, 444, 
512, 522. 

JOHN SHERlVLiN was born in Lancaster, Ohio, May 10, 1823. He studied 
law, and was admitted to the bar in 1844. He was a delegate to the WTiig 
Conventions of 1848 and 1852. In 1854 he was elected a Representative from 
Ohio to the Thirty-Fourth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Fifth, 
Thirty-Sixth, and Thirty-Seventh Congresses. In the memorable contest for 
the Speakership of the House which occurred in 1859 he was the Republican 
candidate, and through a long .series of ballotiugs lacked but one or two votes 
of an election. On the resignation of Senator Chase in 1861, he was elected a 
Senator in Congress from Ohio, and in 1866 he was re-elected for the term 
ending in 1873.— 27, 98, 161, 430, 423, 454, 460, 476, 500, 501, 534, 5^5, 541. 

CHARLES SITGREA VES was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, April 22, 
1803. He adopted the profession of law and settled in New Jersey. In 1831 
and 1833 he was a member of the New Jersey Assembly. In 1834 and 1835 he 
was member and President of the Legislative Council. From 1853 to 1854 
he served in the State Senate. He subsequently held the positions of Mayor 
of PhUlipsburg, President of the Belvidere and Delaware Railroad Com- 
pany, and Trustee of the State Normal School. In 1864 he was elected a Rei> 
resentative from New Jersey to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected 
in 1866. 

ITHAIVIAR C. SLOAN was born in Madison County, New York. He 
adopted the profession of law, and removed to Wisconsin in 1854. In 1858 
and 1860 he was elected District Attorney of Rock County. In 1863 he was 
elected a Representative from Wisconsin to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was 
re-elected to the Tliirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by Benjamin F. Hopkins. — 334, 335. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJ^DEX. 615 

GREEN CLAY SMITH was bom in Richmond, Kentucky, July 2, 1830. 
He graduated at Transylvania College in 1849, and in the Law Department of the 
same institution in 1853. He served in the Mexican War as Second Lieutenant, 
and at the breaking out of the rebellion was commissioned to command the 
Fourth Kentucky Cavalry. In 18G3 he was appointed a Brigadier General, and 
subsequently reached the rank of Major General. After participating in numerous 
battles, ho resigned his military commission in December, 18G3, to take his seat 
as a Representative from Kentucky in the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He was 
re-elected a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, but before the expi- 
ration of his term he was appointed by the President Governor of the Ter- 
ritory of Montana. — 439. 

RUFUS P. SPALDING was born at West Tisbury, Martha's Vmeyard, 
Massachusetts, May 3, 1798. He entered Yale College in 1813, and graduated 
in 1817. After studying law he emigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he re- 
mained one year, and then went to Arkansas. Having spent a year and a half 
in that State he returned to Ohio, and practiced his profession successively in 
Warren, Ravenna, and Akron, and finally at Cleveland, where he now resides. 
In 1839 he was elected to the Ohio Legislature. He was re-elected in 1841, and 
made Speaker of the House. In 1849 he was elected Judge of the Supreme 
Court of Ohio. In 18G2 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to tho 
Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth 
Congresses.— 819, 443, 508. 

WILLIAM SPRAGUE was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, September 11, 
1830. He was educated chiefly at the In^ng Institute, Tarrytown, New York. 
He subsequently spent several years in the counting-room of his imcle, upon 
whose death he came into possession of one of the largest manufacturing inter- 
ests in the country. In 18G1 he was elected Governor of Rhode Island. He 
entered with zeal into the national cause at the breaking out of the rebellion, 
and was with the Rhode Island Volunteers at the first battle of Bull Run. In 
1863 he was elected a Senator in Congress from Rhode Island for the term end- 
ing in 1869.— 27, 494. 

JOHN F. STARR was born in Philadelphia in 1818. He removed to New 
Jersey in 1844, and engaged in business pursuits. In 1863 he was elected a Rep- 
resentative from New Jersey to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. He was succeeded 
in the Fortieth Congress by William Moore. 

THADDEUS STEVENS was born in Caledonia County, Vermont, April 4, 
1793. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1814, and in the same year re- 
moved to Pennsylvania. While teaching in an academy he studied law, and 
in 1816 was admitted to the bar in the County of Adams. In 1833 he was elected 
to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and served four terms, rendering signal ser- 
vice to the State by originating the school-system of Pennsylvania. He early 
espoused the cause of anti-slavery, and became an earnest advocate of equal 
rights. In 1836 he was elected a member of the Convention to revise the State 
Constitution, and refused to append his name to the amended instrument, be- 
cause it restricted suffrage on account of color. In 1838 he was appointed a 
Canal Commissioner. In 1843 he removed to Lancaster, where he now resides. 
In 1848 he was elected a Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-First 
Congress. He was re-elected to the Thirty-Second, Thirty-Sixth, Thirty-Seventh, 



616 THIRTY-KIKTK CONGRESS. 

Thirty-Eiglitb, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses.— 18, 24, 29, 34, 48, 156, 
308, 325, 333, 336, 357, 306, 417, 418, 435, 436, 449, 463, 478, 502, 503, 504, 513, 
514, 518, 524, 528, 535, 536, 547, 555, 557, 563, 575. 

WILLIAM M. STEWART was born in Wayne County, New York, August 
9, 1827, and removed with his father to Ohio in 1835. He entered Yale College 
in 1848, where he remained eighteen months. He then went to California and 
spent two years in the mining business. In 1852 he commenced studying law, 
and was soon after elected District Attorney for the County of Nevada. In 
1854 he was appointed to perform the duties of Attorney General of California, 
and subsequently practiced law in Nevada City and Downieville. In 1860 he 
removed to that part of Utah territory which is now Nevada, and served in the 
Territorial Legislature of the following year. He was a member of the Constitu-' 
tional Convention of 1863. He "was soon after elected a United States Senator 
from the new State of Nevada for the term ending in 1869.— 28, 100, 107, 202, 
275, 427, 435, 454, 456, 459, 530. 

THOMAS N. STILWELL was born in Butler County, Ohio, August 29, 1830. 
He was educated at Miami University and Farmer's College. He studied law, 
and, removing to Indiana in 1853, he was admitted to the bar, and practiced 
until 1855, when he engaged in banking. In 1856 he was a Representative in 
the Indiana Legislature. He raised a regiment of volunteers for the war, and 
served some time as Quartermaster. In 1864 he was elected a Representative 
from Indiana to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was succeeded in the Fortieth 
Congress by John P. C. Shanks. He was appointed by President Johnson United 
States Minister to Venezuela. — 564. 

JOBN P. STOCKTON was born in Princeton, New Jersey, August 2,1825. 
His father and grandfather were United States Senators, and his great-grand- 
father was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He graduated 
at Princeton College in 1843, and, having studied law, was admitted to the bar 
in 1849. He was appointed by the Legislature of New Jersey to revise the laws 
of the State. As reporter in chancery, he published three volumes of Reports, 
which bear his name. In 1858 he was appointed by President Buchanan Minis- 
ter Resident to Rome. In 1865 he appeared in Congress as a Senator from New 
Jersey. The question of his right to the seat underwent long discussion, and at 
length was decided against him on the 27th of March, 1866. — 568. 

WILLIAM B. STOKES was bom in Chatham County, North Carolina, Sep- 
tember 9, 1814. His father was killed by an accident while emigrating to 
Tennessee in 1818. He enjoyed but few advantages of early education, and 
devoted himself to agricultural pursuits. In 1849 he was elected a Representa- 
tive in the Tennessee Legislature, and was re-elected in 1851. He was elected 
to the State Senate in 1855. In 1859 he was elected a Representative from 
Tennessee to the Thirty-Sixth Congress. At the close of his Congressional term 
he took a bold stand and made numerous speeches against secession in Ten- 
nessee. In 1862 he recruited and commanded a regiment of cavalry, which saw 
much hard fighting and did valuable service. At the close of the war he was 
brcvetted Brigadier General. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from 
Tennessee to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was admitted in July, 1866. He 
was r&^lected to the Fortieth Congress. — 480, 536. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IKBEX. 617 

MYEB STROUSE was born in Gennany, December 16, 1825. He came 
with bis father to America in 1833, and settled in Pottsvillo, Pennsylvania. 
^a^in{^ received an academical education, he studied law. From 1848 to 1853 
he edited the " North American Farmer," in Philadelphia, and subsequently 
devoted himself to the practice of law. In 18G3 he was elected a Representa- 
tive to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1864, His successor in 
the Fortieth Congress is Henry L. Cake. — 444. 

CHARLES SUMNER was born in Boston. January 6, 1811. He graduated 
at Harvard College in 1830, spent three years in the Cambridge Law School, 
and was admitted to the bar in 1834. For three years he editi.'d the " American 
Jurist," and was subsequently Reporter of the United States Circuit Court. He 
published several volumes of Reports, and has devoted much attention to literary 
pursuits. He published in 1850 two volumes of " Orations ;" in 1853 a work on 
" White Slavery in the Barbary States ;" and in 1856 a volume of " Speeches and 
Addresses." In 1851 he was elected a United States Senator from Massachu- 
setts. In 1856 he was assaulted in the Senate Chamber by Preston S. Brooks, 
of South Carolina, and so seriously injured that he sought restoration by a 
temporary absence in Europe. Just before his departure he was elected to 
the Senate for a second term, and in 1863 was re-elected for a third term ending 
in 1869.— 15, 36, 28, 99, 108, 373, 374, 380, 386, 393, 406, 413, 435, 453, 483, 490^ 
540, 541, 563, 571. 

STEPHEN TABER, whose father, Thomas Taber, was a Member of 
Congress, was born in Dover, Dutchess County, New York. Havmg received ah 
academical education, he devoted himself to agriculture in Queens County, on 
Long Island. In 1860 and 1861 he was elected to the State Legislature. In 
1863 he was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Ninth Congress and was 
re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

NATHANIEL G. TAYLOR was born in Carter County, Tennessee, Decem- 
ber 29, 1819, and graduated at Princeton College in 1840. He studied law and 
was admitted to the bar in 1843, but subsequently became a minister in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church South. In 1853 he was a Presidential Elector, and 
in 1854 was elected a Representative in Congress from Tennessee. In 1865#he 
was re-elected a Representative in the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was admitted 
to his seat in July, 1866. R. R. Butler was elected as his successor in the 
Fortieth Congress. — 480. 

NELSON TAYLOR was born in South Norwalk, Connecticut, June 8, 
1831. He served through the Mexican War as Captain in the First Regiment 
of New York Volunteer^. He subsequently went to California, and was 
elected a member of the State Senate in 1849. In 1853 he was elected Sheriff 
of San Joaquin County, California. In 1861 he entered the military service as 
Colonel of the Seventy-Second Regiment of New York Volunteers, and became a 
Brigadier General. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from New York to 
the Thirty-Ninth Congress, His successor in the Fortieth Congress is John. 
Morrissey. 

M. RUSSELL THAYER was bom in Petersburg, Virginia, January 27, 
1819, and graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1840. He studied 
law, and having been admitted to the bar in 1843, he located in Philadelphia. 
In 1863 he was elected a Representative in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was 



61S THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS. 

re-elected to the Tliirty-Ninth. Ilis successor in tlie Fortieth Congress is Caleb 
N. Taylor.- 83, 235, 438, 532, 538. 

FRANCIS THOMAS was born in Frederick County, Maryland, February 3, 
1799. He was educated at St. John's College, Annapolis. He studied law, and 
was admitted to practice at Frederick in 1830. He was elected to the Maryland 
Legislature in 1832, 1837, and 1829, when he was chosen Speaker. In 1831 he 
was elected a Representative in Congress, and served for ten consecutive years. 
In 1841 he declined a renomination for Congress. In the fall of that year he 
was elected Governor of Maryland, and served until January, 1845. In 1848 
he supported Van Buren and Adams on the Buffalo Anti-Slavery platform. 
In 1850 he was a member of the Maryland Constitutional Convention. At the 
breaking out of the Rebellion he raised a brigade of 3,000 volimteers for the 
military service. In March, 1863, he originated and assisted in securing popular 
approval of a measure which resulted in the emancipation of all the slaves of 
Maryland. He was re-elected a Representative from Maryland to the Thirty- 
Sixth, Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. 

JOHN L. THOMAS, Jr., was born in Baltimore, May 20, 1835, and was 
educated at the Alleghany Coimty Academy. He studied law, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1856. He was appointed Solicitor for the City of Baltimore in 
1861, and held the office two years. In 1863 he was elected State Attorney for 
Maryland, and in 1864 he served as a delegate to the State Constitutional Con- 
vention. In 1865 he was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Ninth Congress 
fo fill a vacancy occasioned by the resignation of E. H. Webster. He was suc- 
ceeded in the Fortieth Congress by Stephenson Archer. 

ANTHONY THORNTON was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, No- 
vember 19, 1814. He graduated at the Miami University, and having studied 
law, he settled in Illinois. He was a member of the Illinois Constitutional Con- 
ventions of 1847 and 1863. In 1850 he was a member of the State Legislature. 
In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Illinois to the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is Albert O. Burr.— 22%. 

LA WBENGE 8. TRIMBLE was born in Fleming, Kentucky, August 20, 
1835. He received an academical education, and entered the profession of lav\-.' 
In 1851 and 1852 he was a member of the Kentucky Legislature. From 1856 to 
1860 he was Judge of the Equity and Criminal Court of the First Judicial Dis- 
trict of the State. He was subsequently for five years President of the New 
Orleans and Ohio Railroad Company. In 1865 he was elected a Representative 
from Kentucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth 
Congress.— 153, 343, 511. 

ROWLAND E. TROWBRIDGE was born in Elmira, New York, June 18, 
1821, and when a child removed to Michigan with his parents, who were among 
the first settlers that penetrated the wilderness back of the old French settle- 
ments. He graduated at Kenyon College, and engaged in the business of farm- 
*ing. In 1856 and 1858 he was elected a member of the Michigan Senate. In 
I860 he was elected a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-Seventh 
Congress. He was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

LYMAN TRUMBULL was born in Colchester, Connecticut, in 1813. He 
entered the profession of law, and removed to Illinois. He was a member of 



BIOGRAPHICAL IJfDEX. 619 

the State Legislature in 1840, and was Secretary of State in 1841 and 1842. lie 
was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois from 1848 to 1853. In 1854 he 
was elected a Representative for Illinois to the Thirty-Fourth Congress, and 
was soon after elected a Senator in Congress for the term commencing in 1855. 
He was re-elected in 18G1, and again in 1807.— 22, 28, 45, 98, 104, 105, 108, 120, 
136, 158, 162, 171, 188, 190, 199, 209, 216, 253, 2G9, 424, 457, 476, 540. 

CHARLES UPSON was born in Southington, Hartford County, Connecticut, 
March 19, 1821. He received an academical education, and at the age of sixteen 
he commenced teaching school, in which ho was employed during the winters 
of seven years. He attended the law school of Yale College for some time, and 
in 1845 removed to Michigan. In 1848 ho was elected County Clerk, and in 
1852 Prosecuting Attorney for St. Joseph County. In 1854 he was elected to 
the State Senate. In 1800 he was elected Attorney General of Michigan, and 
declined a renomination. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from Michi- 
gan to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and 
Fortieth Congresses. 

HENRY VAN AERNA3I was horn in Marcellua, New York, March 11, 1819. 
After receiving an academical education and graduating at a medical college, he 
settled as a physician and surgeon in Franklinville, New York. In 1858 he was 
a member of the State Legislature. In 1862 he entered the army as surgeon of 
the One Hundred and Fifty-Fourth New York Regiment. He resigned this 
position in 1804, and was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty- 
Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

BURT VAN HORN was born in Newfane, Niagara County, New York, Oc- 
tober 28, 1823, and was educated at the Madison University. He was elected 
to the New York Legislature in 1858, and served three terms. In 1860 he was 
elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty-Seventh Congress. He 
was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.— 87, 527. 

ROBERT T. VAN HORN was born in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, May 
19, 1824. After serving an apprenticeship in a printing-office, he studied law, 
and was admitted to the bar in 1849. He subsequently published a newspaper 
two years in Pomeroy, Ohio. In 1855 he emigrated to Kansas City. Missouri, 
where he established a newspaper which is now the " Daily Journal of Com- 
merce." In 1861 he was elected Mayor of Kansas City. He was in the military 
service as Major and Lieutenant-Colonel from 1861 to 1864. He was wounded 
and taken prisoner at Lexington, Missouri, and after his exchange saw much 
active service in Tennessee. While still in the army, he was elected a member 
of the Missouri Senate, and in 1864 he was elected a Representative from Mis- 
souri to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. 

PETER G. VAN WINKLE was born in the City of New York, September 
7, 1808, and removed to Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1835. He was a mem- 
ber of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, and of the Wheeling 
Convention of 1861. He aided in forming the Constitution of West Virginia in 
1802. He became a member of the Legislature of that State at its organization, 
and in November, 1863, he was elected a United States Senator from West Vir- 
ginia for the term ending in 1869.— 194, 459. 

DANIEL W. VOOREEES was born in Fountain Cotmty, Indiane, Sep- 
tember 26, 1828. He graduated at the Indiana Asbury University in 1849, and 



620 THIBTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GEESS. 

commenced the practice of law iu 1851. He held the ofBce of United States 
District Attorney for three years, by appointment of President Buchanan. In 
1860 he was elected a Representative to Congress from Indiana, and re-elected 
in 1862. He appeared in December, 1865, as a member of the Thirty-Ninth 
Congress, but remained only a short time, his seat having been successfully 
contested by Henry D. Washburn. — 568. 

BENJAMIN F. WADE was born in Feeding Hills Parish, Massachusetts, 
October 27, 1800. He received a common-school education, and was employed 
for some time in teaching. At the age of twenty-one he removed to Ohk) and 
engaged in agriculture. He subsequently studied law, and was admitted to the 
bar in 1828. Thereafter he successively held the offices of Justice of the Peace, 
Prosecuting Attorney for Ashtabula County, State Senator, and Judge of the 
Circuit Court. In 1851 he was elected a United States Senator from Ohio, and 
has been twice re-elected, his third term ending in 1869. In March, 1867, he 
was elected President, pro tempore, of the Senate, and thus became acting Vice- 
President of the United States.— 15, 28, 50, 276, 279, 283, 428, 454, 477, 490, 576. 

ANDREW H. WABD is a lawyer by profession, and a resident of Cyn- 
thiana, Kentucky. He was a Representative from the Sixth District of Ken- 
tucky to the Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is 
Thomas L. Jones. — 509. 

HAMILTON WARD was born in Salisbury, New York, July 3, 1829. He 
worked on a farm until nineteen years of age, and was favored with but few 
facilities for acquiring education. In 1848 he began the study of law, and was 
admitted to the bar in 1851. In 1856 he was elected District Attorney for 
Alleghany County, and was re-elected in 1862. At an early period of the war 
he was appointed by the Governor a member of the Senatorial Military Comr 
mittee, and in that capacity aided in raising several regiments of volunteers for 
the army. In 1864 he was elected a Representative from New York to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected in 1866. — 306, 361. 

SAMUEL L. WARNER was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1829. 
He received an academical education, and having studied law at the Yale and 
Harvard Law Schools, was admitted to the bar in 1853. He was soon after 
appointed Executive Secretary of State. In 1857 he was a member of the Con- 
necticut Legislature. In 1860 he was a delegate and a Secretary of the Balti- 
more Convention. In 1861 he was elected Mayor of Middletown, and served 
two terms. In 1865 he was elected a Representative from Connecticut to the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress. His successor in the Fortieth Congress is Julius 
Hotchkiss. — 507. 

ELLIHU B. WASHBURN was born in Livermore, Maine, September 23 
1816. After serving an apprenticeship in the printing-office of the " Kennebec 
Journal," he studied law at Harvard University. He subsequently removed to 
Illinois, and settled in Galena. In 1852 he was elected a Representative from 
Illinois to the Thirty-Third Congress. He has been elected to every succeeding 
Congress including the Fortieth, and has been longer in continuous service than 
any other member of the House. — 30. 

HENRY D. WASHBURN was born in Windsor, Vermont, March 28, 1833 
In his youth he served one year as an apprentice to the tanner's trade, and sub- 



BIOGRAPHICAL liN'DEX. 621 

sequently was employed as a school-teaclier. In 1853 be graduated at the New 
York State and National Law Scliool, and settled in Newport, Indiana. In 1854 
lao was appointed Auditor of Vermillion County, and in 1850 was elected to the 
same position. In 1801 lie raised a company of volunteers, of which he was 
elected Captain. He was soon after made Lieutenant-Colonel of the Eighteenth 
Indiana Infantry, and was commissioned Colonel June, 1803. Ho saw much 
active service, and was breveted a Major General July 20, 1805. He contested 
the seat held by D. W. Voorhees as a Representative from Indiana, and was 
declared by the Committee on Elections to be entitled to the place. He was 
re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.— 508. 

WILLIAM B. WASHBURN was bom in Winchendon, Massachusetts, Jan- 
uary 31, 1820. He graduated at Yale College in 1844, and subsequently 
engaged in the business of manufacturing. In 1850 he was a Senator, and in 
1854 a Representative, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. He was subse- 
quently President of Greenfield Bank. In 1802 he was elected a Representative 
to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and 
Fortieth Congresses. 

MARTIN W^ELKER was born in Knox County, Ohio, April 25, 1819. 
When a farmer's boy and a clerk in a store, he applied himself diligently to 
study, and without the aid of schools obtained a liberal education. At the age 
of eighteen he commenced the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 
1840. In 1851 he was elected Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Sixth 
District of Ohio, and served five years. In 1857 he was elected Lieutenant 
Governor of Ohio, and served one term, declining a renomination. At the 
beginning of the war he served three months as a staff officei* with the rank of 
Major, and was then appointed Judge Advocate General of the State. In 1803 
he was Assistant Adjutant General of Ohio, and Superintendent of the draft. 
In 1864 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress. 

JOHN WENT WORTH, grandson of a member of the Continental Congress 
of 1778, was bom in Sandwich, New Hampshire, March 5, 1815. He graduated 
at Dartmouth CoUege, and completed a course of legal study in Harvard Univer- 
sity. In 1836 he removed to Illinois, and settled in Chicago. He conducted the 
"Chicago Democrat," as editor and proprietor, for twenty-five years. In 1837 he 
became a member of the Board of Education, and occupied that position many 
years. In 1842 he was elected a Representative from Illinois to the Twenty- 
Eighth Congress, and subsequently served in the Twenty-Ninth, Thirtieth, 
Thirty-First, and Thirty-Second Congresses. In 1857 and 1860 he was Mayor of 
Chicago, and was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1861. In 
1804 a Representative in Congress for his sixth term. His successor in the 
Fortieth Congress is Norman B. Judd. In 1807 the degree of LL.D. was con- 
ferred upon him by Dartmouth College. — 18, 550, 557. 

KELLIAN v. WHALEY was born in Onondaga County, New York, May 6, 
1821. When quite young he removed ^vith his father to Ohio, where he was 
favored with few educational advantages. At the age of twenty-one he settled 
in Western Virginia, and engaged in the lumber and mercantile business. He 
was an active opponent of secession in 1860, and as such was elected a Represen- 



622 TEIRTY-J^IJ^TH COJ^GRESS. 

tative in the Tlui-ty-Scventli Congress. He acted as an Aid to Governor Pier- 
pont in organizing regiments, and was in command in the battle of Guandotte, 
when he was taken prisoner, in November, 1861. He made his escape from his 
captors, however, and was soon able to take his seat in Congress. He was re- 
elected to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. His successor in the 
Fortieth Congress is Daniel Polsley. 

WAITMAN T. WILLEY was born on Buffalo Creek, Monongalia County, 
Virginia, October 18, 1811. He graduated at Madison College in 1831, and was 
admitted to the bar. From 1841 to 1855 he was Clerk of the Courts of Monon- 
galia County and the Judicial Circuit. He was a member of the Virginia Con- 
■ stitutional Convention of 1850. He was a delegate to the Richmond Convention 
held in the winter of 1860-61. In 1861 he was a member of the Wheeling Con- 
stitutional Convention. In 1863 he was elected a Senator in Congress from West 
Virginia, and has since been re-elected for the term commencing in 1865 and 
ending in 1871. In 1863 he received the degree of LL.D. from Alleghany Col-' 
lege of Pennsylvania.— 458, 485, 486, 496. 

GEORGE H. WILLIAMS was born in Columbia County, New York, March 
23, 1823. He received an academical education, and studied law. Immediately 
after being admitted to the bar in 1844 he removed to Iowa. In 1847 he was 
elected Judge of the First Judicial District of Iowa. In 1852 he was a Presiden- 
tial Elector. In 1853 he was appointed by President Pierce Chief Justice of the 
Territory of Oregon, and was re-appointed by President Buchanan in 1857. He 
was a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of Oregon. In 
1864 he was elected a United States Senator from Oregon for the term ending 
in 1871.— 393, 488,*516, 517, 529, 531, 539, 540, 559. 

THOMAS WILLIAMS was born in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Penn- 
sylvania, August 28, 1806. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1825, and 
studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1828, and settled in Pittsburg. 
From 1838 to 1841 he was member of the State Senate. In 1860 he was a Rep- 
resentative in the State Legislature. In 1862 he was elected a Representative 
from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He was re-elected to the 
Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. 

HENRY WILSON was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, February 16, 
1812. His parents were in very hiimble circumstances, and at ten years of age 
he was apprenticed to a farmer till he was twenty-one. On attaining his major- 
ity, he went to Natick, Massachusetts, where he learned the trade of shoemak- 
ing," and worked at the business nearly three years. He then secured an aca- 
demical education, and, after teaching school a short time, engaged in shoe- 
manufacturing, which he continued for several years. In 1841 and 1842 he was a 
Senator, and in 1844, 1845, 1856, and 1850, a Representative, in the Legislature of 
Massachusetts. In 1851 and 1852 he was re-elected a member of the State Senate, 
of which he was President. In 1855 he was elected a United States Senator from 
Massachusetts to succeed Edward Everett, and in 1859 was re-elected for the full 
term. In the recess of Congress in the summer of 1861, he raised the Twenty. 
Second Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, of which he was commissioned 
Colonel. He subsequently served on General McClellan's staff, until the meet- 
ing of Congress in December, During the war he occupied the arduous and 



BIOGRAPHICAL IMDEX. G23 

responsible position in tbo Senate of Chairman of the Committee of Military 
Affairs. At the opening of the Thirty-Ninth Congress ho entered upon his tliird 
Senatorial term, which will end in 1871.— 15, 95, 97, 101, 135, 214, 403, 410, 431, 
435, 487, 487, 491, 498, 630, 531, 532. 

JAMES F. WILSON was born in Newark, Ohio. October 19, 1828. Ho 
entered upon the profession of law, and removed to Iowa in 1853. In 1856 he 
was elected a member of the Iowa Constitutional Convention. In 1857 he was 
elected a Representative, and in 1859 a Senator, in the State Legislature. In 
1861 he was President of the Iowa Senate. In that year ho was elected a Rep- 
resentative from Iowa to fill a vacancy in the Thirty-Seventh Congress. He 
was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congresses.— 31, 
51, 230, 337, 239, 288, 294, 325, 536. 

STEPHEN F, WILSON was born at Columbia, Pennsylvania, September 
4, 1821. He received his education at Wellsboro' Academy, where he subse- 
quently engaged for a short time in teaching. He finally became a lawyer, 
and was, in 1863, elected a State Senator. In 1864 he was chosen a Represen- 
tative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to 
the Fortieth Congress. 

WILLIAM WINDOM was born in Belmont County, Ohio, May 10, 1827. He 
received an academical education, and studied law. He was admitted to the bar 
in 1850, and was soon after elected Prosecuting Attorney for Knox County, Ohio. 
In 1853 he removed to Minnesota, and settled in Winona. In 1858 he was elected 
a Representative from Minnesota to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and was re- 
elected to the Thii-ty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Con- 
gresses. — 229. 

CHARLES H. WINFIELD was born in Orange County, New York, April 
22, 1822. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1846. From 1850 to 
1856 he was District Attorney for Orange County. He was elected a Represent- 
ative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress from New York, and was in 1864 re-elected 
for a second term. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Charles H. 
Van Wyck.--20, 515. 

FREDERICK E. WOODBRIDGE was bom in Vergennes, Vermont, August 
29, 1818. He graduated at the University of Vermont in 1840, and was admitted 
to the bar in 1843. He served three years as a Representative, and two years 
as a Senator, in the Vermont Legislature. He subsequently served three years 
as Auditor of State. In 1863 he was elected a Representative from Vermont to 
the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty -Ninth and Fortieth 
Congresses. 

ED WIN B. V. WEIGHT was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, January 2, 
1813. He learned the trade of a printer, and in 1835 edited and published the 
" Jersey Blue." He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. He was 
elected to the State Senate in 1843. He subsequently held for five years the 
office of District Attorney for Hudson County. In 1859 he was the Democratic 
Candidate for Governor of New Jersey, and was defeated by a small majority. 
He was elected a Representative from New Jersey to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 
and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by George A. Halsey.— 363. 



624 TEIBTY-JVIJ^TH COJfGRESS. 

WILLIAM WEIGHT was born in Clarkstown, Rockland County, New 
York, in 1791. In 1823 lie removed to Newark, New Jersey, and held the office 
of Mayor of that city for a number of years. He was a Representative in Con- 
gress four years, commencing in 1843. In 1853 he was elected United States 
Senator for the term ending in 1859. In 1863 he was again elected to the 
Senate for the term ending in 1869. He died before the expiration of the term 
for which he was elected.— 276, 569. 

RICHARD YATES was bom in Warsaw, Kentucky, in 1818. Having 
studied one year at the Miami University, Ohio, he removed to Illinois, and 
graduated at Illinois College in 1838. He studied at the Law School of Lexing- 
ton, Kentucky, and having been admitted to the bar, he settled in Jacksonville, 
Illinois. In 1842 he was elected to the State Legislature, and served until 1850. 
In 1851 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Illinois, and served 
two terms. He was subsequently President of a railroad for several years. In 
1861 he was elected Governor of Illinois for the term of four years. During his 
administration, 258,000 troops were raised in Illinois and sent to the field. He 
was not only active in his State in promoting the success of the national cause, 
but he frequently encouraged the regiments of Illinois by his presence with 
them in the camp and on the field. In 1865 he was elected a Senator in Con- 
gress from Illinois for the term endmg in 1871.— 28, 272, 398, 400, 461, 462, 484, 
491. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



Abandoned Lands, restored to rebel owners, 143. 

Adams, J. Q., Expenses of bis Admiuistration, 111. 

Admission of Soutberu Representatives proposed, 279. 

Agriculture, Senate Committee on, 27, 31. 

AI.ARAMA, Black Code of, 146. 

Alhambra, tbe betrayal of, 05. 

Allegiance and Protection reciprocal, 257. 

Amalgamation, not an etfcct of Negro Suffrage, 75. 

Amendment, Constitutional, effect of, 196 ; confers Civil Rigbts, 210 ; tbe Civil 

Rigbts Bill, a sequel to, 225 ; a warrant for tbe Civil Rigbts Bill, 229 ; 

confers citizensbip, 273. 
Amendment, Constitutional, of Basis of Representation, 824; explained by 

Mr. Stevens, 325 ; failure in passage, 416. 
Amendment, Constitutional, for Negro Suffrage proposed, 377 ; advocated, 387 ; 

voted down, 415. 
Amendment, Constitutional, for Reconstruction, proposed, 435 ; final passage, 

463 ; ratified by numerous legislatures, 505 ; tben and now, 512. 
Amendments, Constitutional, needed, 312. 
Amendment to Freedmen's Bureau Bill, proposed by Mr. Cowan, 130 ; rejected, 

136 ; to title of tbe bill, 136 ; proposed in tbe Senate, 298. 
Amendment to Civil Rigbts Bill by Mr. Hendricks, 218 ; by Mr. Saulsbury, 219. 
Amendment, tbe power of, exbausted, 349. 
Amendments, a complicity of, 363. 
Amendment, a crablike, 375. 
American Citizensbip, wbat it amounts to, 257. 
Ancient Governments, exceptional in tbeir liberty, 206. 
Andersonville, rebel atrocities at, 101. 

Anthracite not suitable material for a Corintbian column, 56. 
Appeal, of Mr. Saulsbury, 534. 

APPE.VL to tbe people against Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 152. 
AppROrRiATiON, tbe Committee on, 29. 
Army, bill to fix tbe peace footing of, 553. 
Art, in tbe capital, 571. 

Assault upon Mr. Grinnell by Mr. Rousseau, 573. 
Attorney General on tbe trial of Jefferson Davis, 123. 
"Authority and Power" of tbe Government, distinction between, 445. 

Ballot-box to be purified by tbe angel element, 487, 492 ; a bigb court of 

errors, 497. 
Ballot, tbe negro's best protection, 162 ; tbe great guarantee, 876 ; tbe source 

of safety for tbe freedman — eloquent extract, 399 ; dangerous in tbe bands 

of tbe ignorant, 497. 
Bancroft, bis eulogy on President Lincoln, 570. 
Banking and Currency, Committee on, 30. 
Bankruptcy, Committee on, 31. 
Bankrupt Law, its difference from former acts, 554. 
Banner of Freedom, and tbe banner of tbe Democracy, 8G. 
Barabbas and tbe Saviour, 380. 
40 



G2G AJfALYTICAL IJ^DEX. 

Basis of Representation, necessity of cliangiug the, 812 ; proposed amendment 
of, 324 ; explained, 325 ; involves taxation without representation, 326 ; 
effects iSiegro Suffrage, 327 ; reasons which commend it, 831 ; bearing on the 
various States, 332 ; Avould allow property qualification, 832 ; amendment 
proposed by Mr. Orth, 337 ; how settled in 1787, 338 ; its rejection predicted, 
838 ; how its provisions may be avoided, 839 ; construed as an attack on the 
President, 343; facts and figures concerning, 344; objections, 846, 347; 
great opposition to the proposition, 350; its injustice to the African, 352; 
benefit to the Republican party only, 3G2 ; multiplicity of amendments, 
863 ; passage in the House, 371 ; before the Senate, 374 ; " not an improve- 
ment," 375 ; what it will accomplish, 381 ; colored men against it, 392 ; a 
party measure, 395 ; summary of objections, 402 ; an " abortion," 40G ; ten 
objections, 407 ; good effects of, 411 ; failure to pass the Senate, 41 G ; regret 
of Mr. Stevens at its death, 43(3. 

Benevolent features of the Freedmen's Bureau, 179. 

Berkeley's Metaphysics, 310. 

BiKTn confers citizenship, 305. 

Blaine's Amendment, 527 ; combined with Bingham's, 528 ; proposed in the 
Senate, 529. 

Black-laws of Southern States, substance of, 147 ; of Mississippi and South 
Carolina, 191 ; recently passed, 214. 

Black skin a badge of loyalty, 53. 

Blood asked for, 896 ; Chandler's explanation, 397. 

Bounty, additional, bill to grant, 552. 

Boyhood of Mr. Saulsbury, 193. 

" Bread and Butter Brigade," 521. 

Brownlow, Governor, his proclamation, 473 ; his despatch to the Secretary of 
War, 475 ; his loyalty and firmness, 480. 

Brown, Senator, of Mississippi, his opposition to the education of the blacks, 388. 

Buchanan, President, his veto of the Homestead bill, 255 ; his views of 
secession, 442. 

' By-play " of the Rebel States T\-ith Secretary Seward, 313. 

Capitol, the, character and situation of, 571. 

Caspak Hausers, four millions of, 329. 

Cato on the Immortality of the Soul, 377. 

Caucasians, none save, have become citizens, 199. 

Celtic race distinct from ours, 360. 

Censure of Mr. Hunter, 515 ; of Mr. Chanler, 571. 

Centralization deprecated, 229, 237, 266. 

Chairmanship of Committees, New England's preponderance in, 401. 

Charities not to be given by Congress, 148. 

Cherokees naturalized, 233. 

Chicago Convention of 1860, its doctrine, 60. 

Children rescued from the burning house, 390. 

Chinese, Civil Rights Bill makes, citizens, 246, 255. 

Ceoctaw Indians naturalized, 233. 

Churches, colored, in the District of Columbia, 59. 

(!'iTiZENSHiP conferred upon the people of Texas, 199. 

Citizenship conferred by U. S. Government, 239 ; includes State citizenship, 
253 ; does not confer State citizenship, 271. 

Citizen, what constitutes a, 201. 

Civil Rights denied to negroes in Indiana, 117, 131 ; all departments of the 
Government designed to secure, 221 ; denial of makes men slaves, 224. 

Crv'iL Rights Bill foreshadowed, 98 ; introduced, 188 ; its provisions, 189 ; ne- 
cessity for it, 190 ; a dangerous measure, 192 ; object of it, 210 ; odious mil- 
itary features, 211 ; opposed, 216 ; explained and defended, 217 ; have been 
in the law thirty years, 218 ; bill passes in the Senate, 219 ; before the 
House, 220 ; recommitted, 233 ; its beneficence towards Southern rebels, 233 ; 
interferes with State rights, 222, 286 ; amendment proposed by Mr. Bing- 
ham, 287; rejected, •242 ; argued as unconstitutional, 287, reply, 239 ; passes 
the House, 243 ; odious title proposed, 243 ; as amended, passes the Senate, 
244 ; vetoed by the President, 2 16 ; veto answered, 253 ; passes over the 



A:N'ALTTICAL IJTDEX. G27 

veto, 288, 289 ; tlio form in which it became a law, 290 ; propriety of plao 
ing it in the Constitution, 438. 

Colfax, Scliuyler, elected Speaker of the House, 20 ; vote of thanks to, 57G. 

Colloquy between Chank^r and Bingham, 07; Davis and Trumbull, 13G, 199; 
Clark and Davis, 201 ; Brooks and Stevens, 330 ; Iligby and Hill, 35G ; Dixon 
and Trun\bull, 424; Doolittlc, Nye, and Lane, 457 ; Ashley, Conkliuo;, and 
Stevens, 513 ; Doolittlc and WUson, 531 ; on Bpecie payments, Stevens, 
Wentworth, and (iarfiekl, 550. 

Collar ihe President's, charirc of wearing repelled, 284. 

CoLOU of a citizen not iA(iuiretl into in our early history, 51 ; should not be re- 
garded in our laws, 53 ; iudefiniteness of the term, 300. 

CoLOKADO, reason of the non-admission of, 559. 

Commerce, Committee on, 27, 30. 

Commissioner of Freedmen's Bureau, 140. 

Committees, the importance of, in legislation, 25 ; difficulty of selecting, 20. 

Committee on Reconstruction, 49 ; report of, 400 ; difficulty of obtaining infor- 
mation by, 407; conclusion of, 471. 

Compound Interest Notes, attempt to redeem, 558. 

Compromise of Moral Principles opposed, 374. 

Concert of action desired, 37. 

Confederation, the old, and the Constitution, 310. 

Confiscation discarded by civilized nations, 320. 

Congress, no danger to be feared from usurpation by, 501 ; as described by 
President Johnson, 501 ; salutary effect of vetoes upon, 563. 

Connecticut, the voice of on negro suffrage, 394. 

Conservatism the worst word in the language, 101. 

Conservatives represented by Mr. Raymond, 314. 

Constitutional Amendment, what laws may be passed under, 118. 

Constitutional Amendments, how they should be made ; advice of Mr. Sauls- 
bury, 405. 

Constitutional Amendments in the interests of slavery once popular, 405. 

Constitutional Authority of the President and General Grant, 124. 

Constitutional Convention of 1787, 338. 

Constitution, the, powers it confers, 122 ; violation of, an oft-repeated argument, 
149; to be destroyed by the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 148; imrecoucilable 
with military rule, 176 ; caused to bleed, 193 ; does not exclude negroes from 
citizenship, 203 ; against State Sovereignty, 319 ; more liberal before the Re- 
bellion, 327 ; may be legally amended, 357 ; as estimated by its makers, 
278 ; not necessary to re-enact it, 380. 

Contrast between whites and blacks under Kentucky law, 154. 

Cotton, export duty on proposed, 312. 

" Counter proposition " by Mr. Sumner, 373, 379, 382 ; rejected, 415. 

Courtesy of Senator Wade, as described by Mr. McDougall, 282. 

Cowan, Edgar, his radicalism, 489 ; his seriousness, 490. 

Davis, Garrett, his programme for the President, 430, 432 ; struck " dumb," 209 ; 

his ability to " hang on," 533. 
Davis, Jefferson, why not tried, 123 ; acted " vmder color of law," 260 ; not a 

traitor if rebel States are treated as. foreign powers, 317 ; his proclamation, 

480. 
Dead States described, 308 ; impossible, 316. 
Death-Knell of Liberty : passage of Reconstruction Bill, 547. 
Deaths of Senators, 509 ; of Representatives, 570. 
Debates of the Senate and House, difference, 452. 
Debate, right of in the Senate, 38. 
Debt, accumulated burden of the public, 147 ; rebel, how inherited by the 

United States, 317 ; must be repudiated, 319. 
Defeat, the lesson of, 410. 

Defiance of the majority by Garrett Davis, 244. 
Defilement of the Constitution, 407 ; answer to the charge, 410. 
Delaware, the last slaveholding State, 127. 
Delay needful, 382. 
Delays of the Senate, protest against, 394 ; benefits of, 453. 



628 ANALYTICAL LXDEX. 

Despotism, establislimcnt of, in the South, 531. 

Democbacy, leader of the, confusion concerning, 30G. 

Democratic ascendency, dangers attendini,^ :!12. 

Democratic party against the Government, 899 ; policy of, traversed, 443.' 

Democrats, their new discovery, 358 ; how they caused the passage of the Recon- 
struction Amendment, 451 ; hunting up negro voters, 498. 

Development always slow, 64. 

DisFRANcnisEMEXT of uegroes by whites, 3G5, 376 ; opposed, 387 ; of rebels 
advocated, 448. 

Dissolution of the Union in the passage of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, IGO. 

Disunion, threat of, 161. 

District of Columbia, Committee on, 28 ; under the special care of Congress, 
50 ; number and character of rebels in, 77. 

District of Columbia, bill to extend suiFrage in, introduced, 51 ; motion to 
postpone, 83 ; amendments proposed, 83 ; and rejected, 93 ; passage in the 
House, 93 ; called up in the Senate, 483 ; reason for its occupying so much 
attention, 485 ; why it was not passed before, 491 ; its passage, 499 ; veto, 
500 ; passage over the veto, 501 ; why it was so long deferred, 504, 505. 

Dog, injustice to a, 509. 

Doolittle, his position on the CivU Rights Bill, 285 ; " a fortunate politician," 
459 ; the savior of his party, 469. 

Dream of Thaddeus Stevens vanished, 463. 

Dred Scott Decision against civil rights, 1 98, 364. 

Du Pont, Admiral, his mention of the negro pilot, 71. 

Earthquake predicted, 447. 

Education, the Committee on, 30. 

Education of Freedmen, provision for, 145. 

Education, an uncertain test, 63 ; should be made a test, 63 ; of colored children, 
a scene in the old Senate, 389 ; Bureau of, 553. 

Educator, the best, the ballot is, 399. 

Elective franchise, a means of elevation, 57 ; the only proper test for its 
exercise, 61 ; its abridgment not authorized by the Amendment of Repre- 
sentation, 358 ; the President's view of his power over, 562. 

Emancipation, its effect upon rights, 328. 

Enfranchisement to be a gradual work, 354 ; how to bring about, 411 ; not 
disfranchisement, the question in reconstruction, 506. 

England, her paper money and specie payments, 556. 

Epoch in the history of the country, 204. 

Equality, political, a " fiendish doctrine," 61. 

Equality does not exist, 195. 

Equal Rights, the blessings of, 377. 

Excitement, the Senate not unfitted for business by, 421. 

Exclusion from citizenship, a right, 195. 

Executive obstruction of Congress, 560. 

Executi\'E patronage, evils of, 559. 

Expense of Freedmen's Bureau, 110 ; objections to answered, 128 ; for one year, 
145, 147, 100 ; as presented by the President, 180. 

Expulsion of Garrett Davis prayed for, 573. 

Female Suffrage advocated, 487. 

Females not a political element, 345. 

Finance, the Committee on, 37 ; the subject of, 555. 

Fiske, General, his statement, 183. 

Flag, the American, 40. 

Flowers of rhetoric, from a Senator's speech, 413. 

Foot, Solomon Ms death, 569. 

Foreign Ministers, penalty for proceeding against, 359, 367, 370. 

Foreign population, their representatives in Congress, 369, 379. 

Foreign Relations, Chairman of Committee on, 26. 

Foreigners not discriminated against in the Civil Rights Bill, 354. 

Fosi'ER, L. S., as President of the Senate, 33 ; retirement from the office, 576. 

Fueedmen, their necessities and numbers, 95 ; Committee on, 31, 95 ; Senator 
Wilson's bill to protect, 95 ; objections to, 98 ; laid over, 103. 



Ai^ALYTICAL IKBEX. 620 

Freedmen's Bureau, a bill to enlarge introduced in the Senate, 105 ; its pro- 
visions, 105 ; its expense, 111 ; its military foiiture, 113 ; for the negro, 
against tlie white man, 119 ; not designed to l)e jjermanent, 121 ; establish- 
ment of schools, loO ; passes the Senate, 130 ; bronglit up in the House, 
188 ; passage, 157 ; " a dissolution of the Union," 100 ; its bounty to the 
Avhites, 103 ; veto of, 104. 

Freedmen's Bureau Bill, the second reported, its provisions, 295 ; passage in 
the House, 295 ; in the Senate, 290 ; fonn as it became a law, 298 ; veto of, 
802 ; passage over the veto, 800 ; the bill and the veto, 503. 

Freedom elevates the colored race, 85. 

Friendship for the negro, Mr. Chowan's, 135. 

Fugitive Slave Law, its provisions employed in the Civil Rights Bill, 190, 
192 ; its re-enactment in the Civil Rights Bill opposed, 212 ; and advocated, 
213 ; used for a good end, 210. 

Garbling, an example of, 572. 

General Government supreme to confer citizenship, 239. 

Generosity towards rebels, McDougall's illustrated, 401. 

Georgia, her avoidance of the Civil Rights Bill, 275 ; possessory titles of freed- 
men to lands in, 108. 

Gerilvn woman, a slave, 349. 

Government, all departments of the, designed to secure civil rights, 221. 

Government, the need of the South, 510. 

Grant, General, on the Freedmen's Bureau, 119; his order to protect officers 
from civil prosecution, 123 ; his order setting aside black laws, 215 ; his re- 
port, 503. 

Greatness of America, 800. 

Groundswell, danger of, after the war, 02. 

Gypsies, their birth and citizenship, 240, 255. 

Habeas Corpus, restored to loyal States, 123 ; its suspension an evidence that 
the war had not closed, 177. 

H.VPPIKESS of statesmen who died before recent legislation, 194. 

Hayti, her blow for liberty, 09. 

Highwayman, his weapons restored, 122. 

Homes for Freedmen, the purchase of, 115. 

Homestead Bill, Southern, 553. 

House of Representatives, scene at the opening of, 10. 

Howard, General, placed at the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, 139 ; his oper- 
ations, 142. 

Hungary, why revolutionary, 383. 

Ignorance among colored people rapidly disappearing, 54 ; the nation charg- 

able with, 02 ; in the South, 140. 
Impeachment proposed, 500 ; report of Committee on, 507. 
Indiana, negro suffrage not necessary in as in the South, 77 ; liable to be placed 

under the jurisdiction of Freedmen's Bureau, 110 ; military rule in, 112 ; 

ci\-il-rights denied to negroes in, 117 ; marriage in, 131 ; not in rebellion, 

125. 
Indiana and Massachusetts, prejudice against color and against ignorance, 337. 
Indians, appropriations voted to feed and clothe, 120 ; excluded from civil rights, 

201 ; becoming extinct, 410. 
Indictment substituted for Writ of Error, 274. 
Individuals, not States, commit treason, and are punished, 310. 
iNDUSTRiAii interests promoted by negro suffrage, 494. 
Intelligence should be required of the negro voter, 73, 81. 
Iowa, zeal and patriotism of her colored people, 73 ; vote on negro suffrage in, 

74. 
Ireland, cause of her troubles, 383. 

Jamaica, insurrection in, cause of, 75. 

.Jefferson as quoted by President Johnson, 500-. 

Jesus Christ, the spirit of, 223, 224. 

Johnson, Andrew, becomes President, 13 ; liis amnesty proclamation, 14 ; how 



GSO AXALYTICAL IKBEX. 

the odium against would be sliared by Congress, 519 ; " the late lamented 

Governor," 487. 
JonxsoN, Senator, Andrew, his reply to Buchanan's veto, 255, 284. 
JoiiJsSOX, Doctor, and the leg of mutton, 40G. 
" Johnsonian, new converts," 439. 
JuDiCLVL authority under Freedmen's Bureau, 130. 
JudiciaIj Department, the only hope, 512. 
Judiciary Committee of the Senate described, 28 ; of the House, 31 ; subjects 

properly referred to it, 38 ; report on impeachment, 567. 
JcilY Trial not given under martial law, 175. 
Justice should be done to white and black, 119. 

Kansas, her protest against the denial of rights, 89 ; in 1856, 90 ; surrendered 
to the machinations of slave masters, 99. 

Kentucky, Union party in, 152 ; necessity for Freedmen's Bureau in, advocated 
and opposed, 134 ; members from, their opposition to the Freedmen's Bu- 
reau, 149; her opposition to the Government, 153; laws of, relatino- to 
whites and blacks, 154 ; diiriug the war, 211 ; will submit, 343 ; the United 
States, an appendage to, 362. 

Killing an official, opinion as to when it should be done, 151. 

" King can do no wrong," a bad maxim, 260. 

Koh-i-noor of blackness, 407. 

Ladies, their supposed opinions on female suffrage, 492. 

Laertes, his language endorsed, 529. 

Lands not taken from owners by Freedmen's Bureau, 183. 

Lane, James H., his suicide, 569. 

Law, " under color of," explained, 258, 260. 

Laws in Kentucky for whites and blacks, 211. 

Lawyer " abating the statesman," 208. 

Leader, of the democracy, confusion concerning, 306 ; of the House, 575. 

Lee acted "under color of law," 260. 

Legislature of Tennessee, Constitutional Amendment in, 473. 

Legislatures do not constitute States, 327. 

Legislative power, danger of its abuse, 500. 

Light from the House not needed in the Senate, 44. 

Lincoln, Abraham, his assassination, 13 ; how he closed a chasm, 230 ; his lan- 
guage, 323 ; his death " no loss to the South," 562 ; celebration of his birth- 
day, 570. 

Lion, the prostrate, 71. 

Loan Bill, the, 558. 

Loyalists, Southern, never lost their right of representation, 427. 

Loyalty impossible if States are foreign powers, 317. 

" Male," the word should not be placed in the Constitution, 370. 

Manhood of the negro race recognized, 91. 

Manufactltiers, Senate Committee on, 27 ; House, 31. 

Marius upon the ruins of Carthage, 287. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, decision pronounced by, 253. 

Maryland, necessity for Freedmen's Bureau in, 135. 

Massachusetts, her law of suffrage, 63 ; her character, 74; her example not to 

be quoted, 92 ; crimes are perpetrated in, 97 ; prejudice against ignorance 

in, 336 ; Senator Sumner advised to leave, 336. 
Mayor of Washington, his remonstrance against negro suffrage, 486. 
J.IcClellan's proclamation against the slaves, 67. 

McCuLLOCH, circumstances under which he should receive great credit, 558. 
McDouGALL, his habits and talents, 277. 
McPiierson, Edward, Clerk of the House, 16 ; his conduct in the organization, 

17 ; strictures on, 431. 
Memorial from colored men, 393. 
Metaphysical argument for female suffrage, 493. 
Military affairs. Committee on, 31. 



ANALYTICAL IJfDEX. 63 1 



rARY feature of the Ci\il Rights Bill opposed, 21G ; explained and defended, 
17 ; lias been tlio law ;]0 years, 218 ; nothing,' unusual, 235. 
rARY frovernmonts in the South, colloquy concerninff, 530. 



MiLITJ 

217; 

MlLIT.V^.- ^, - , . „ . . 1 . 1 1 1 

Military protection of Freedmeu'a Bureau opposed, 112 ; explained and advo- 
cated, 12G, 172. 

Military Reconstruction Bill, discussion of a previous proposition, 503 ; the 
measure proposed, 51(5 ; its form, 517 ; explained, 518 ; danfrer in not pro- 
viding for civil governments, 5213 ; a police l)ill only, 528 ; Blaine's amend- 
ment of, 527 ; passes the House, 529 ; Sliernum's amendment, 534; passes 
the Senate, 535; amended in the House, 541 ; final passage, 524 ; vetoed; 
passes over the veto, 547, 548 ; final forin, 548. 

Military should not supersede civil authority, 524. 

Mill, John Stuart, in favor of female suffrage, 488. 

Mississippi, black code of, 14G ; distinctions in against blacks, 191 ; numbers of 
whites and negroes in, 384. 

Missouri injured by making voters the basis of representation, 3G6. 

Monopoly, Southern, of human rights,' 376. 

Montgomery Convention committed treason " under color of law/' 2G1. 

Murder, being unlawful, can not bo committed, 310 ; answer, 315. 

Name, ability to read and write the, as a qualification for voting, 49G. 

Napoleon not liable to execution if taken in war, 317. 

Native-born persons not subjects for naturalization, 200, 201 ; the position op- 
posed, 203 ; advocated, 208. 

Naturalization Aci as constituted by Congress, 203 ; may be changed, 20nt ; 
its nature, 232. 

Naturalization of races, authorities, instances, 233, 238, 254. 

Nebraska admitted into the Union, 559. 

Negro brigade, charge of at Port Hudson, 71. 

Negro, Cuvier's definition of, enlarged, 484. 

Negro competition not to be feared, 229. 

Negro equality does not exist in nature, 144. 

Negro race, a mine or a buttress, 86 ; dying out, 408 ; answer, 409. _ 

Negroes have no history of civilization, 55 ; content with their situation, 55 ; 
their wealth in Washington, 58 ; should have citizenship, but not suffrage, 
63 ; their inferiority, G7 ; became soldiers under discouraging circumstances, 
70 ; their property and patriotism, 71 ; of Iowa, their patriotism, 73; danger 
in the influence of politicians over, 79 ; elevated by freedom, 85 ; their man- 
hood recognized, 91 ; laws against them in the South, 147 ; prejudice against 
in the South, IGl ; citizens before the Constitution in North Carolina, 200 ; 
in New Hampshire, 201 ; allowed to compete for the Presidency, 222, 229 ; 
our allies, should not be deserted, 234 ; their services in the war, and subse- 
quent wrongs, 282 ; competent to vote, 387 ; eligible to the highest offices, 
387 ; their heroic deeds, 391 ; their enfranchisement should be gradual, 393 ; 
enormities practiced against, 504. 

Negro suffrage, evil effects of, 60 , would humble the white laborer, 65 ; chronol- 
ogy of in several States, 73 ; a necessity for the South, 7G ; retributive 
justice to rebels, 77; best obtained by indirect means, 412; history of the 
legislation for, 483 ; course of Mr. Yates on, 484 ; passage over the veto, 501. 

Neutrality in Kentucky, 152. 

New England, undue preponderance of in the Senate, 401 ; answer, 403 ; her 
happiness in not being despised, 413. 

New England Senators not silent during the war, 402. 

New Hampshire, negroes citizens in, 201. 

New York and Mississippi, inequality in their representation, 329 ; not affected 
by change in the basis of representation, 332. 

New York Times, editorial in the, 444. 

North Carolina, negroes citizens in before the Constitution, 200 ; legislation 
of, concerning white slaves, 349. 

North and South, statesmen of the, 384. 

North, the political, what constitutes, 57. 



G32 ANALYTICAL IjYDEX. 

Object of the war, 44. 

Office, ineligibility to, as a punishment, 458. 

Oligauciiy, the i^owcr of, should be ended, 350. 

Pacific Railroad, Committee on, 30. 

Pains and penalties of not holding office, 458. 

Panegyric on Union and rebel dead, 3G4 ; answered, 370. 

Pakliament and the King, 477. 

Partisan controversy, 442. 

Party for enfranchisement, how to be raised up, 411. 

Party man, Mr. Hendricks not sxispected to be, 412. 

Patent medicine in the Senate, 162. 

Patterson, Senator of Tennessee, case of, 478 ; admitted to a seat, 482. 

Penalty essential to effectiveness of law, 259 ; is not permission, 414. 

Pennsylvania docs not need the Freedmen's Bureau, 133 ; against negro citi- 
zenship, 195. 

People, " the sacred," constitute the States, 327 ; their verdict for Congress, 
564. 

Perry, Governor, his disloyalty, 562. 

Persian Mythology — Gods of Light and Darkness, 277. 

Physical endurance, a question of, 419. 

Policy of Congress shown in legislation for the District of Columbia, 50 ; of the 
President, 423. 

Political existence alone entitles to representation, 330 ; faith maintained in 
"the worst of times." 532 ; rights not conferred by Civil Rights Bill, 256; 
society in the South must be changed, 445. 

Precipitate action deprecated, 382. 

Prejudice of the Southern people against the negro, 161. 

Present time contrasted with 1787, 338. 

President's right to say who constitute Congress, 431. 

Presidency, negroes allowed to compete for, 222, 229. 

President Johnson, duty of Congress to sustain, 41 ; Congress not to be bound 
by his opinion, 42 ; reluctance of Congress to break with, 94 ; described as 
whitewashing, 99 ; not a " summer soldier," 100 ; his character as a Avitness 
vindicated, 101 ; restores the habeas corpus, 123 ; views on good faith to 
freedmen, 131 ; policy of restoring lands to rebel owners, 143 ; veto of Freed- 
men's Bureau Bill, 104 ; answered by Mr. Trumbull, 171 ; veto of the 
Civil Rights Bill, 245 ; his controversy wdtli Congress, 262 ; harmony 
desirable, 269 ; his dictation to Congress opposed, 276 ; defended by Mr. 
Lane, of Kansas, 280 ; wearing his collar, 181 ; as Moses of the negroes, 282 ; 
not infallible, 283 ; his defection and its effect, 294 ; his invitation to Con- 
gress, 314 ; the Constitutional Amendment construed as an attack iipon, 
343 ; speaks through an " unusual conduit," 366 ; effect of his dictation, 
372 ; effect of his speech, 419 ; description of, 423 ; effect of his opposition 
to reconstruction, 451 ; his patriotic duty, 459 ; eulogy on, 460 ; charged with 
responsibility for the state of the country, 463 ; taking " ministerial steps," 
464 ; his influence in Tennessee, 473 ; liis protest against a preamble, 477 ; 
veto of the Suffrage Bill, 500 ; his usurpations, 508 ; how long he gov- 
erned the South, 519 ; his greatness, 520 ; hope for harmony with, 524 ; 
hope only in the removal of, 526 ; his course rendering military recon- 
struction necessary, 527 ; how he executed the law for two years, 536 ; his 
terms towards Congress, 561 ; his 22d February speech, 563 ; before the 
people, 564 ; his vetoes, impeachment proposed, 566 ; resolution compli- 
mentary to, 571. 

President of the Senate, the office vacated and assumed, 576. 

Privileges and immunities of a Member of Congress, 575. 

Progress, in six years, — a scene in the Senate, 389. 

Progress, tlie tide of, cannot be stayed, 400. 

Property qualification may be restored in South Carolina, 332. 

Prospects, brilliant, before the country, 394. 

Public j ustice slow, but sure, 287. 

Public Lands, Committee on, 30. 

Punishment and reward, Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Sumner, 413. 



ANALYTICAL I:N'BEX. 633 

PuKisnjiENT of tlic Soutlioru Statesi, 395. 

Qualification of Members decided upon hy each House separately, 39. 

Races, diflFcrenccs in, cannot be obliterated, 5G ; diversity of opinion concerning, 
360. 

Radical bull taken by the horns, 314. 

Radical and Conservative policy contrasted, 320 ; different in details, not in 
essence, 323. 

Radicai-ism, no danger of shipwreck from, 4G3. 

Radical majority, its ranks strengthened, 294. 

Radical principles indestructible, 428. 

Radicals, their purpose to be rational, 489. 

Rail-Splittkk and tailor-"boy, 400. 

Reading and writing as a qualification for voting, 487 ; Mr. Dixon's proposition, 
495 ; lost, 499. 

Ream, Miss Miunie, her commission to make a statue of Lincoln, 470. 

Rebellion, its surviving strength, 527. 

Rebels, their hatred of the negro, 76; retributive justice to, 77; what is 
expected of them, 133; authority should not be restored to, 123; should be 
trusted, 223, 386 ; their confidence to be won, 228 ; not to be conciliated by 
the sacrifice of the freedmen, 231 ; not to be deprived of citizenship, 233 ; 
called " the nation's dead," 364 ; rei)ly, 370 ; sufficiently punislied, should 
be readmitted, 429 ; instructions to, 426 ; proposition to disfranchise, 436 ; 
ojiposed, 438 ; the number who would be disfranchised, 440 ; their disfran- 
chisement passes the House, 450 ; rejected in the Senate, 455 ; the most 
guilty, 448 ; in Congress, six years ago, 449 ; generosity towards, illustrated, 
401 ; their conduct gives justice to the negro, 516. 

Rebel States, their status, 37, 41, 45 ; facts respecting, 46 ; cannot destroy the 
Union, 145 ; their treatment of the negro, 153 ; their lack of representation 
no obstacle to legislation, 185 ; should not deprive loyal States of the power 
to legislate, 254 ; laws of, oppressive to freedmen, 261 ; how their absence 
affects legislation, 268 ; dead, 308 ; how restored, 309 ; how they lost their 
existence, 331 ; never out of the Union, 314 ; how should be treated, 318 ; 
bill to restore to political rights introduced, 502 ; Mr. Stevens' labor upon 
it, 528. 

Rebel war, novel theoiy of, 509. 

Reconsteuction, as begun by President Johnson, 14 ; resolution to appoint a 
committee on, 34, 48 ; committee on, 49 ; their appointment, how regarded, 
307 ; first report of committee on, 324 ; committee on, denounced, 441 ; its 
consummation eloquently portrayed, 448 ; Report on, 466 ; three modes of 
503 ; character of the committee on, 513 ; styled " Maelstrom Committee," 519. 

Reconstuction Amendment proposed, 435 ; denounced as revolutionary, 437 ; 
passage in the House, 450 ; influence of the Democrats in passing, 451 ; 
length of debate on, in the Senate, 453 ; amendments and substitutes pro- 
posed, 454, 455 ; " stupendous mercy," 461 ; passage, 463, 463 ; its form, 
463 ; transmitted to the States, 465. 

Reel in the bottle, 415. 

Refugees, their st( a-ies, 533. 

Religion, appealed to, 458. 

RemarKjVBLe combination of Senators, 415. 

Representation, Constitutional Amendment concerning, proposed, 334. 

Representation, modes of, considered, 330 ; the old rule of, arbitrary, 344 ; of 
Southern States, resolution concerning, 417 ; passage, 433 ; " straw in a 
storm," 433 ; " useless, yet mischievous," 433. 

Representatives, seats of, 85. 

Reprimand of Mr. Rosseau, 574. 

Republic, American idea of, historical summary, 375; its overthrow lamented, 507. 

Republicanism, its meaning, 477. 

Republican Government denied to the District of Columbia, 90 ; how guaran- 
teed, 311 ; what constitutes, 356 ; inconsistent with denial of right of 
suffrage, 340 ; opinion of the fathers concerning, 385. 



GoJ^ ANALYTICAL IJ^DEX. 

Republican Party, its success or failure, 88 ; Rousseau's remark upon, 151 ; its 
responsibility, 80(5 ; declared by Mr. Stevens not responsible for his opinions. 
308 ; its demands, .823 ; its negro capital, 3G1 ; alone benefited by change 
in Basis of Repi'esentation, 363 ; how it may retain power, 395 . history and 
triumph of, 420 ; its " scheme," 442 ; its position defined, 443 ; its desire, 510. 

Revolution, a Constitutional and peaceful, 208 ; produced by Civil Rights Bill, 
287, 288. 

" Rich man's war, and poor man's fight," 446. 

Rights, danger of denying, 88 ; of voting essential to the enjoyment of other 
. rights, 92 ; as affected by emancipation, 328. 

Rousseau and Grinnell, affair of, 151, 573. 

Rome, her treatment of conquered Latium, 314 ; her noble " bloods " lost, 338 ; 
she rebukes America, 892. 

Russia, an example of, 99 ; Czar of, his example cited, 155. 

Saviour of the world found liis followers among the poor, 88. 

Sarsapawlla and the ballot, 163. 

Schools for frcedmen should be pro\adcd by Grovemment, 130 ; of colored people 
in the District of Columbia, 59. 

SCHURZ, General, evidence of his report, 76, 563. 

Scott, General, his death, 459 ; funeral and statue, 570. 

Secession, Ordinance of, a nullity, 314. 

Self government, a right, 61. 

Self preservation, a right of the nation, 523. 

SEAT3, selection of, 23. 24. 

Senate, opening scenes in, 14 ; supposed division of, 431 ; its proper business 
and mischievous business, 460. 

Senator, the Greek, and the Sparrow, 93. 

Senators not legislators for their own States alone, 186 ; republican, as they 
appeared after a caucus, 456. 

Serapis, destruction of the statue of, 145. 

Seward, Secretary, his despatch to Minister Adams, 71 ; and the nobleman's 
dog, 509 ; defended, 513. 

Sherman, General, his order assigning lands to freedmen, 114, 128. 

Sherman's Amendment to the Military Reconstruction Biii, 534. 

Slave, the, under American law, 197. 

Slaveholder, the last in America, 127. 

Slaves have supported themselves and their masters, 70. 

Slavery, its evil influence, 87 ; dead, 103 ; its destriiction, 145 ; abolition of, 
duty consequent upon, 188 ; voted perpetual by Congress, 230 ; right of U. 
S. to prohibit, 319 ; not confined to the African race, 348, 349. 

Small, the negro pilot, 71. 

South, what constitutes the, 57. 

South Carolina attempts to keep the slave in bondage, 96 ; her laws against 
the negro, 146 ; her representation to be reduced, 831 ; and Wisconsin, ine- 
quality in representation, 334 ; her numbers of whites and negroes, 334 ; 
how she may evade the Constitutional Amendment, 341 ; President John- 
son's advice to, 562. 

Southern people, their kind feeling towards negroes, 227 ; a majority op- 
posed to secassion, 446 ; their disposition, 470 ; advised to strike for liberty, 
494. 

Southern States, number of illiterate persons in, 146 ; in a better condition than 
to be expected, 109 ; their representatives should be admitted, 355 ; the 
numbers disfranchised by them, 365 ; an appeal to their love of power, 369 ; 
anti-republican, 376 ; punishment of, 895 ; not kept out by New England 
jealousy, 403; their losses in the war, 408 ; revolution relating to, 417 ; their 
relation to the Union unchanged, 437. 

Sovereignties, divided, essential to the existence of the nation, 367. 

Speaker of the House, his influence upon legislation, 576. 

Specie payments, when to be reached, 556. 

St.vrs of heaven and the constellation of the States, 144. 

State of the country, imparallcled, 178. , 

Statesmanship the rule of, 539 ; what constitutes, 533. 



AKALYTICAL IKBEX. 635 

Statesmen of the North ami South, 384. 

State sovereignty, the doctrine destroyed, otO. 

St VTES rights defined, 228; Civil Rights Bill endangers, 222, 236; answered, 
340. 

States reserved the right to confer citizenship, 2G5 ; the number recognized by 
the President, 335; South and North, their ratio of representation com- 
pared, 344. 

Statistics of Frecdmen's Bureau, 154, 182. 

Statutes declaring what tlie law is, common, 2.")4. 

Stewart's proposition for universal suffrage, 435. 

St. Domingo, insurrection in, without a parallel, G8. 

Stockbridge Indians naturalized, 233. 

Story, Justice, as quoted by President Johnson, 500. 

Subjects, who are, how made citizens, 233. 

Suffrage in the District of Columbia, bill extending, 51 ; the first act in a po- 
litical drama, 54 ; not i)rematurely proposed, 91. 

Suffrage limited by the intiuenco of slavery, 52 ; negro to be effected by Con- 
stitutional Amendment, 327 ; the proper basis of reT)resentation, 335 ; the 
right of, Congress may regiilate, 3G4 ; negro or rebel? 383 ; impartial, ad- 
vocated by Mr. Yates, 398 ; by Mr. Pomeroy, 404 ; female, advocated and 
opposed, 488; advocated by Mr. Wade, 490; rejected, 495; its true base, 
495. 

Sun obscured by Congressional acts, 337. 

Supplementary Keconstruction Bill, 550. 

Sympathizers, Northern, with rebellion, 78. 

Tactics, Parliamentary. 418. 

TiVRiFF, subject of the, 554; bill, 555. 

Taxation vv^ithout representation opposed, 326,333 ; proposed exemption of un- 
represented negroes from, 386 ; the principle of, annoimced, 555. 

Tears for the slave, 192. 

Temptation to be friends of the President, 564. 

Tennessee, efforts of members to gain admission, 17 ; effect of veto of Freed- 
men's Bureau on the admission of, 418 ; right of Congress to iuqiure into 
the loyalty of, 434 ; her readmission anticipated, 448 ; first to ratify the Con- 
stitutional Amendment, 473 ; resolution for restoring representation to, 474 ; 
its passage, 476. 

Tenure of office, bill to regulate, 559. 

Terms of sm-rendcr to be fixed by the President, 319. 

Territorial Government proper for rebel States, 312. 

Territories, democratic doctrine on, fruits of, 442. 

Test Oath, 21 ; should be modified, 47 ; resolution to modify the, 480 ; opposed 
by Mr. Stokes, 480 ; by Mr. Conkling ; laid on the table, 481. 

Texas, citizenship conferred on the people by legislation, 198 ; negroes in, una- 
-ware of their freedom, 393. 

Time proper for amending the Constitution, 345, 352, 355. 

Toombs and his gang make a " hell of legislation," 449. 

Townsend's Sarsaparilla, and suffrage, 530. 

Tranquillity impossible while rights are denied a portion of the people, 486. 

Treason, charge, of resented, 284. 

Tribunes of Rome, their "veto," 278. 

Trouble with the negro, how ended, 390. 

Trumbull, Senator, his visit to the President, 263, 283. 

Union Party of 1881, its policy on slavery, 342 ; its position defined, 443. 
Union to be dissolved by act of Congress, 40 ; under the Constitution and old 

confederation, 316 ; means of having a prosperous, 461. 
Universal suffrage, its sure triumph, 400. 

" Venomous fight," a, 419. 
Verbal details, criticism on, deprecated, 520. 

Veto, of the Freedmen's Bm-eau Bill, 165 ; bill fails to pass over, in the Senate, 
187 ; Mr. Raymond desirous of avoiding, 235 ; of Civil Rights Bill, 246 ; ef- 



636 AKALYTICAL IKDEX. 

forts of Congress to avoid, 282 ; appeal of Senator Andrew Jolinson against, 
2()4 ; jxnver of the Executive, 278 ; of the second Freedmen's Bureau BilJ, 
302 ; of the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill, 500 ; of Military Reconstruc- 
tion Bill, 542 ; of Tenure of OfEce BDl. 500 

Vetoes, summary of, 505. 

Virginia, her legislation concerning citizenship, 349. 

Virginians, probable cficct of negro suffrage upon, 498. 

Vote on appointment of Reconstruction Committee, 35, 48 ; en Negro SuflFrage. 
93 ; on Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 130, 157, 187 ; on Civil Rights Bill, 219', 
243 ; on veto of Civil Rights Bill, 288, 289 ; on Reconstruction Amendment, 
450 ; on Basis of Representation, 371, 416 ; on Military Reconstruction Bill, 
535. 

Votes of disfranchised persons in the Electoral College, 329. 

Voters, objections to, as basis of representation, 351. 

Voters, qualifications of, under the Military Reconstruction Bill, 550. 

Voting, the mode of in Joint Committees, 39. 

Voting, the right of not correlative with the duty to bear arms, 493 ; popula- 
tion in States, old and new, 335. 

Wade accused of secession sentiments, 428. 

War, effects of the, 62 ; opinions of General Grant and the Attorney General on 
its termination, 123 ; results of the, 209. 

War of races, how produced, 75 ; how avoided, 383. 

War power of the Freedmen's Bureau, 125. 

War, the only remaining means of preserving civil liberty, 519 ; difficulty of 
raising soldiers for such a, 521. 

Washington City thriftless under the rule of slavery, 52 ; schools and churches 
of colored population in, 59 ; negroes in, their property and patriotism, 71 ; 
its situation, 571. 

Washington, George, on alterations of the Constitution, 358. 

Wats and Means, Committee on, 29. 

Welfare, public, subserved by passage of Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 149. 

Whipping negroes to disfranchise them, 504. 

" White-man's Government," this is not exclusively, 57, 61 ; the idea opposed, 
207 ; eloquent passage concerning, 391 ; answer to, 390. 

" White," mistake of Colorado in using the word, 559. 

White i^eople, civilized governments intended for, 00 ; sometimes vote wrong, 
79 ; never legally slaves, 370 ; not discriminated against, 258 ; recipients of 
bomity of Freedmen's Bureau, 103 ; General Fiske's statement, 182. 

White population to be crowded out by blacks, 150. 

White soldiers did more than black, 06. 

" Whitewashing," charged against the President, 99, 503. 

Wisconsin, instructions to the Senators of, 280 ; and South Carolina, their une- 
qual representation, 334 ; her declaration on negro suffrage, 394 ; radicals 
of, Doolittle against the, 533. 

Women, crusade against, deprecated, 370. 

TouNG gentlemen in Congress, suggestions to, 529. 



THE END. 






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